


Love and War Stories

by Jaune_Chat



Series: Love and War Stories [2]
Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cover Art, F/M, Gen, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-08
Updated: 2009-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-03 05:57:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaune_Chat/pseuds/Jaune_Chat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being rescued by Mohinder, Luke joins up with a group of rebels led by Peter Petrelli.  Luke finds himself intrigued by another damaged rebel, Elle, as all the rebels struggle to free other specials, hide from the hunters, and keep themselves sane.  But when an unexpected turn of events have things going from bad to worse, Peter realizes the rebels will have to enlist the help of the strongest special any of them knows.  By making a deal with the devil, can the rebels stop the war <i>and</i> manage to keep themselves from turning into monsters?  Can the rebels hold onto what's good in their lives throughout this time of war?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Heroes BigBoom 2009. Thanks to brighteyed_jill, redandglenda, and ashedrake for betaing. 
> 
> **Spoilers:** Specifically up through 3x15 “Trust and Blood” and brings in _some_ chosen canon elements up through 3x23 “1961.”
> 
> Ashedrake made a wonderful [Love and War Stories Movie Poster](http://ashedrake.livejournal.com/19557.html) that you should totally go check out and tell her how awesome it is. :)

Peter stumbled to an ungraceful landing, barely catching himself from tumbling to the cracked pavement of the parking lot. He clutched the nearby chain-link fence and clung until he had his breath back. Nathan’s flight might let him cross the country in less than ten minutes, but after doing it a dozen times, ferrying freed specials to safe houses, he was exhausted.

“Peter?” He jerked around at the sound of his name and immediately regretted it as his back spasmed up. Yes, twelve passenger flights was definitely his limit.

“Matt?” he whispered. Matt Parkman beckoned from the shadows, and Peter gratefully stumbled into the darkness beside him as Matt checked behind him for any sign of pursuit. “How did you know where I was?”

“Molly,” Matt said shortly, and nodded at Peter to get moving. Peter hid a grin behind his fatigue. Matt had been so certain Molly had been safe with Mohinder’s mother in India that he had been understandably surprised to have found her quietly running a country-wide rebellion with Micah Sanders a couple months back. For Micah, getting Molly a private plane ticket back to New York had been a cinch. It hadn’t been easy on Matt _or_ Mohinder, having her this close to the action, but neither of them wanted to send their “daughter” away again.

“I thought she’d be asleep by now,” Peter said, blinking hard to get his eyes to focus.

“She wanted to make sure ‘uncle Peter’ was all right. Come on, you don’t look so good,” Matt urged.

“I don’t _feel_ so good,” Peter grumbled, and let Matt lead him into a nearby battered apartment building. Up one flight of stairs and down at the end of the hall, Matt knocked on the door to number thirteen. 

After a long minute, there was the _snick_ of no less than three locks, and then the rattle of a chain, finally cracking to reveal a short, fit young black woman who looked at Peter warily. Behind her was the dark, curly-haired mop of Micah Sanders. 

“Wow,” he said, staring at Peter with wide eyes.

“Hello to you too,” Peter said in greeting, and let Matt steer him inside. Peter knew full well he looked like he’d just been dragged through the seven circles of hell facedown, and didn’t really want to have to discuss it with a twelve-year-old. Even if that twelve-year-old was basically the founder of the organized rebellion.

Matt was abruptly tackled by Molly before they got five steps inside the door, and Peter took the opportunity to collapse on the couch. He thought he might have passed out for a second, because the next thing he knew, Molly was tugging on his sleeve, a glass of water in her hand. Peter raised himself up on an elbow to drink it, and realized Micah was right behind her, laptop in hand. Behind _him_ was the young woman he didn’t know.

“Micah’s cousin,” Matt broke in abruptly, answering Peter’s question before he could ask it. “Monica Dawson, meet Peter Petrelli.”

“Hey,” Peter offered finally, and managed a smile. One more rebel, one more fugitive who was willing to fight back. If she would rather have hidden, she wouldn’t be _here_ , that was for certain. 

“Hey,” Monica said, and smiled brightly.

“Sorry, I’m kinda out of it. Long day,” Peter explained lamely. He wanted to stand up and greet her properly, make her feel like she’d made the right choice. He was the self-appointed leader of this rebellion, but he couldn’t manage anything more than a, “Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m doing all right. I’ve been helping Micah and Molly for the past few months.”

Ah, that suddenly made more sense. Peter had been wondering how the kids had been more-or-less single-handedly running a quiet rebellion before he, Matt, and some of the others had managed to get their act together. As Rebel, Micah and Molly had been able to find specials incredibly quickly, even those who were already off the grid, and had helped rescue them even without Peter or Mohinder’s help…

“Do you have an ability?” Peter asked cautiously.

“Yes. Dr. Suresh called it adaptive muscle memory-.”

“Once she sees something done, she can do it,” Micah piped up. Monica nodded, holding up an iPod that was currently running some kung-fu film.

“Huh,” Peter said, nodding in agreement. Incredibly useful, that. No wonder Micah had managed to keep him and Molly so safe. With his electronic forewarning, Molly’s knowledge of where everyone was, and Monica’s physicality to break them out of any bad situation, they were virtually self-sufficient. “Cool.”

Monica smiled, now with a tinge of sadness, and helped Peter pull himself upright. Peter wondered who she’d lost to put that expression on her face. They’d all lost someone; that was why they were all in this together.

“We have a list,” Micah said as Peter got up, and waved at his computer. “Everyone on the database so far: who’s free, who’s not, who we’ve contacted already, and who’s going to fight-.”

“Fantastic!” Peter exclaimed, fatigue momentarily forgotten.

“It’s not as many as we’d hoped for,” Matt warned. “Most of them are like those people you were transporting tonight. They just want to hide until this goes away.”

Peter gritted his teeth in frustration. “This isn’t going to _go away_ ,” he said tightly. “This won’t stop until someone makes it stop!”

Until he forced Nathan to make it stop. God, why did everyone have to be so stubborn? Nathan wouldn’t admit he was wrong, Peter wouldn’t forgive him, and Peter’s strongest and most steadfast allies right now consisted of two twelve-year-old kids, a college-age girl, and one thirty-odd ex-cop.

“Then we’ll have to convince them!” Micah said. Molly stood by his shoulder, and both of them looked determined enough to march out there right now and start knocking on doors. Peter’s eyes slid over to Matt briefly.

“No. Don’t even ask. Either people get into this with both eyes open, or they stay hidden,” Matt said flatly.

“Ok.” Peter breathed out in relief. “Ok, I hear you.” 

“Hey, I don’t blame you. I think we all want people to wake up, but you know we can’t force it,” Monica said, putting her hand on Micah’s shoulder.

Peter took a few deep breaths and nodded. He’d been running himself ragged since the plane crash two months ago, and certain little things like morals, compassion, and common sense were starting to elude him. He needed sleep before he said something that would give the others an even lower opinion of him that they already had; but that would have to wait for at least five more minutes. Summoning his last wind, he nodded at Micah.

“Ok. Got it. Who’s on the list?” Peter asked. 

Micah handed him a printout, and Peter studied it carefully. There was shockingly little to study really: less than a dozen names. 

“That’s it?” Peter asked softly. Micah nodded sadly. “Damn. What about Tracy? I thought she’d want to fight for sure.”

“I asked. She said no,” Micah shrugged. “She just wants to get away from all of this. She hates running, or at least that’s what she said in her e-mail. I was gonna ask if you would help hide her tomorrow.”

Peter ran a shaking hand over his face. The list of potential rebels was short, and full of people who would have wildly conflicting personalities. On the one hand, they probably didn’t need to add Tracy’s volatile, selfish antics to the mix. On the other, she was a very determined person, and her ability could come in damn useful for any number of situations.

“I’ll talk to her before I get her to safety. Maybe if she hears it in person, she’ll change her mind,” Peter said wearily. 

“Maybe. It can’t hurt,” Matt said with a hopeful shrug. “Peter, we’re going to move up to the safe house in a week. Hiro has it all set up. It should take the others just a few days to get there. Mohinder will meet us there once he’s sure he isn’t being followed. He thinks this Luke guy will be willing to join up.” 

Peter nodded once, and leaned back down on the couch, his momentary burst of energy exhausted. Fatigue was pulling at him like a lead weight. “Wake me if we’re under attack or something,” he said, and didn’t go to sleep so much as pass out. And for once he was too tired to dream of his brother. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Where are we going?” Luke asked. Mohinder had been driving them steadily westward for the better part of the day, constantly checking his mirrors and the sides of the road as if expecting trouble. Since that had been exactly what Sylar had done, Luke had fallen into the routine without a single question. It was only after lunch that he’d remembered Mohinder wouldn’t strike him or say something cutting if he asked a question. It always took Luke a few hours each morning to remember that he didn’t have to conform to Sylar’s rules anymore.

“To meet some of my friends,” Mohinder said. “I wanted to give you options.” Mohinder seemed hesitant to add anything after that.

Luke sighed, and asked the question. “What kind of options?”

“The government is capturing everyone with abilities and imprisoning them-,” Mohinder started.

“Duh,” Luke said, rolling his eyes. “I kinda got personal experience with that.”

“Some of those being captured are being executed,” Mohinder continued flatly. Luke had no snappy comeback for that. “Some people are just trying to stay hidden. Others who have been identified we’ve helped rescue from government custody and provided new identities for them. If the specials stay below the radar, they can sometimes stay safe. And some of us are fighting back. We’re rescuing other specials, incapacitating agents, and disrupting their operation as much as possible.”

“Ok, so what about me?” Luke asked, wanting to get to the point.

“What do you want to do Luke? I can get you a new identity here and help you find a place to hide. If you avoid drawing attention to yourself, you should be all right for a while. You could strike out on your own, if you want to. I could help you there. Or… you could join us and fight.”

Luke stared at Mohinder for a second. Hide like a little bitch or fry some of those bozo agents. Was that actually a _choice?_

“I’ll fight, man,” Luke said with a feral grin. He couldn’t wait to get back at those government jerks…

“It’s more about rescuing people than revenge,” Mohinder said quietly. “Every time an agent dies or gets hurt because of someone with an ability, things get worse for all of us.”

Luke stared at the dashboard for a long time.

_You have to care what happens to you._

“I’ll fight,” Luke repeated, dropping the bloodthirsty edge in his voice. Yeah, he wanted the agents to pay. He bet the agents wanted the same from him, after what happened to Agent Simmons. He clenched one hand into a fist, fear curdling his stomach. Was getting revenge worth having a shoot-to-kill order out on him?

_Fuck it._

“It won’t be easy. We have some resources, but we rebels don’t exactly have an easy life-.” Mohinder abruptly cut himself off as Luke rolled his eyes. Luke’s life was sort of the definition of not easy. “Sorry.”

“’S ok,” Luke muttered. Mohinder, at least, wasn’t saying this kind of stuff deliberately to hurt him. In some ways, he reminded Luke of the science nerds at school, full of information and mostly lacking in social skills. 

\------

“If you want to fight, then I’m going to take you to meet Peter,” Mohinder said, quickly moving on. In an odd way, it was a relief that Luke’s life up until now had been so hard; at least he was not offended when Mohinder forgot to be perfectly tactful. 

“Who’s he, the brains of the operation?” Luke asked.

Mohinder smiled. “Not really.”

“Oh duh, you are, right? Scientist and stuff?”

Mohinder felt his smile get brittle. “No. I’m a geneticist, like I said. My work either consists of long conversations with people and their families to find out their genetic history so I can track the pattern of genetic changes, which is frankly useless in tracking abilities, or it’s doing chromosomal mapping to look for mutations, which requires a great deal of time and some very delicate equipment. We have neither.”

Luke started to look bored, and Mohinder hastened to clarify his answer to the original question. “Micah, Molly, and Matt do virtually all of our intelligence. I’m actually the muscle of the operation.” The twist of fate that had led him from the path of brilliant geneticist to bruiser made that statement come out far more bitter than he had intended. “Peter… he’s the heart. He keeps our spirits up, keeps us going. He drives us on.”

“Huh,” was all Luke had to say to that. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peter touched down a good ten blocks away from Tracy’s apartment, hiding himself amidst the debris in a vacant lot, checking around at all levels until he was pretty sure he wasn’t about to be ambushed. He sighed in relief; he was alone. Pulling a hat out to push low over his head, and shoving his hands in his pockets, Peter began to walk briskly.

Even if he were captured, at least Matt was on the way to a safe house with the _real_ rebels. As long as Micah, Molly, and Monica were free, the resistance would continue. Those kids had managed to do more good in a few months than Peter felt he had done in years. That was part of the reason he was driving himself almost into exhaustion every day, in an attempt to match, in some small way, the fact that they had willingly, voluntarily, taken on more of a burden than anyone would have expected them to bear. And they bore it without complaint, indeed sometimes with cheer.

Next to that, a little exhaustion was nothing.

Checking behind him again and again, Peter managed to get to Tracy’s door without being followed. He knocked, and then quickly stepped to one side, just in case. Looking down, Peter saw the doorknob begin to smoke with the onset of bitter cold, and instinctively pulled his hands into his sleeves.

“It’s Peter,” he whispered harshly. The doorknob stopped smoking, and after several long minutes, the door opened.

Tracy peered out warily, her long blonde hair tied back in a messy bundle, her clothes shapeless and haphazard, her blue eyes angry and frightened. Seeing him, she opened the door just enough to admit him, locking it firmly behind him.

“Where’s my new identity?” she demanded, keeping her voice low. “There’ve been people sniffing around; I can’t stay here long.”

Peter fumbled for the packet of papers Micah had given him this morning, his heart starting to sink. Maybe this had been a mistake. Tracy sounded even more uncooperative in person than she had on the phone.

“You can still change your mind,” Peter said softly, handing Tracy her packet. She snatched it from his hands and quickly flipped through it with the expertise that had come from years in politics. 

“I don’t think so. All I want is to get out of this freak-show, and putting myself on the government’s Most Wanted list isn’t going to help,” Tracy said sharply. “I appreciate you guys smuggling me away from the plane wreck, but my answer is final.”

“We could use your help, and you have to admit that it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have other eyes looking out for government agents right?” Peter tried again. 

“I can take care of myself,” Tracy said, and rolled her eyes as she took a look at her new address. “Alaska? Nice choice. You could have least put me in Vail or Aspen.”

“The last place we want you is somewhere where people will recognize you. Sorry, Tracy, but it was Alaska or Canada,” Peter said apologetically. Mentally though, he was congratulating Micah on his choice. Alaska _was_ a very safe choice, that wasn’t a lie, but it was so remote for a high-powered political player like Tracy that she might be willing to pick the rebels over exile.

Scowling, Tracy shuffled her papers together and shoved them into a duffle bag on the floor. Heaving it onto her shoulder, she started to push past Peter.

“Thanks,” she said bitterly. “Let’s get going.”

“Where?” Peter asked, hoping against hope.

“Alaska, where the fuck else?” she almost snarled.

“Tracy, you could be there for the rest of your life unless we get lucky. We’re trying to do the best we can, but we could really use your help. Please,” Peter begged, putting his hand on her shoulder.

Tracy hesitated, looking back over her shoulder at her empty apartment, devoid of anything like her former life, lacking everything she’d ever worked for in the past ten years. Then she looked at Peter, gray with exhaustion, desperately pleading for her help, having just told her he was exiling her to Alaska to keep her safe. Tracy Strauss had always been good at assessing the best option for herself.

“Take me to Alaska,” she said. Pausing, she added softly, “Good luck anyway, ok?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“If we’re lucky, we shouldn’t have more than a week of traveling left,” Mohinder said wearily, setting his bag down on the motel bed. Luke followed suit, cracking his neck casually. He figured he should be nervous about meeting these rebels, but couldn’t get worked up about it. At least not when it wasn’t an immediate concern.

“Are you doing all right?” Mohinder asked, almost entirely out of the blue. 

Luke glanced over at him, curious and wary. He still kept expecting to be hit, even though Mohinder had never laid a single finger on him without Luke’s express permission. In Luke’s experience, questions had to be answered, or something bad would happen. With his mom, non-answers got exasperated sighs or yelling. With Sylar, non-answers usually ended up with a telekinetic punch to the gut.

“Ok, I guess,” Luke said with a shrug. “Why?”

Luke’s wariness wasn’t just reflexive, not entirely. He just had no friggin’ idea of how to act around Mohinder half the time. How the hell did you act around someone who didn’t _want_ anything from you? Every night since him and Mohinder had gone at it, he’d wanted to repeat the experience, but he wasn’t quite sure how to ask. One thing he didn’t want to do was parade around like a whore, like he had for Sylar. Not when Mohinder seemed to have a higher opinion of him than anyone else ever had. Not when Mohinder would wake Luke up from his nightmares, and sometimes hold him through the aftermath of his fears.

“I just wanted to make sure,” Mohinder said, and ran his hand through his hair nervously. He looked like he was working his way up to saying something. “Luke… I want to talk to you about something, but I’m honestly no good at this and I don’t want to say something wrong.”

“I’m guessing it’s not about chromosomal mapping,” Luke muttered, quipping to cover nervousness. Mohinder laughed heartily at that, and Luke found himself smiling. It was weirdly nice to be around someone who laughed at his jokes instead of just staring in stony silence.

“No, I’m afraid not. It’s about you and me,” Mohinder said quickly. “I do like you, please know that was never in doubt. It’s just that we’re less than a week out from the safe house, and Matt will be there.”

The way Mohinder said “Matt,” allowed Luke to fill in pieces of the puzzle immediately. An old boyfriend maybe, someone else he cared about, probably more than Luke. Luke’s reflex of thinking of himself as a victim kicked in along with came the usual wash of jealousy, of being second best, the convenient fuck in between steadies. Slower came a newer part of him, pointing out Mohinder had _just fucking said_ he didn’t want to hurt Luke. Clamping down on the jealousy, Luke nodded tersely.

“So, who’s Matt?” he asked shortly.

“We were living together for about eight months, him and me and Molly, his ward. We became friends… and then more than that. It… was a first for both of us. Then things started getting out of hand. Matt had to confront his father and went on an unscheduled trip, I started my experiments, and things pretty much fell apart until after the plane crash. I didn’t even know if I was still… worthy of anything he’d given me. I didn’t know if I was still capable of being kind, not after what I’d done. I thought no one would ever trust me again. 

“When I realized what Sylar had done to you, I thought I had at least one more chance of making amends. I wanted to help you, because you made me realize I could still be a good person. If I could be that… then perhaps I could look Matt and Molly in the eyes again, and not want to hide.”

Luke just stared at Mohinder, taken completely aback. _That was like… a total Hallmark Channel moment right there,_ was his first thought. His second pointed out that it didn’t make it any less true. Luke hadn’t realized he was the only person to have ever felt like he’d fucked up beyond all sense and reason. Except Mohinder was trying to do something about it. And Luke was part of that becoming not fucked up. 

Either Mohinder was on to something, or he was insane. One of the two. 

“Please… say something?” Mohinder pleaded.

Luke wrapped his arms around himself and sat on the bed. It wasn’t the first time he’d had a Serious Conversation, but it was the first time someone actually meant for it to _be_ a conversation, and not just him being talked at. 

“So… you don’t want to have sex anymore?” Luke blurted out, just asking the first thing that came to his mind. He mentally kicked himself a second later.

Mohinder blushed, but sat down next to Luke and hugged him hard.

“I like you, I do,” Mohinder repeated. “And I want you to be able to choose who you want. Everyone deserves to be able to make that choice.” 

Choices again. The first big decision Luke had ever made for himself was to go with Sylar. Mohinder had been slowly trying to cure him of his gun-shyness in choosing what _Luke_ wanted, but it still gave him a faint flicker of panic.

“Do you-?” Luke started, and took a deep breath. Maybe he could delay making a choice for himself until he was knew what his choices were. “You want Matt?”

“I need to talk to him, and I don’t know if he’ll understand… well, anything I’ve been doing for the past half-year.”

Which was a yes, Luke thought, taking in a hard breath. He didn’t know what to do. 

“Who else is gonna be there?” Luke asked.

“A few people closer to your age, some mine, some far older or younger,” Mohinder said vaguely. “I didn’t get the exact details, but all of us are in this together. Everyone there is at least going to be looking for a friend.”

That wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, and it sure didn’t sound like Luke was going to find someone like Mohinder, though no one there could possibly be as bad as his dad, or Sylar. Mohinder sure wasn’t going to go away either…

“Ok. I’ll… I’ll try,” Luke said finally, and felt rewarded when Mohinder smiled at him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peter touched down outside the safe house, the new headquarters for the rebellion, and tried to keep his feet. He’d deliberately delayed his return for a few days, not just because he’d had to fly Tracy to an obscure little town in Alaska, but because he didn’t dare be anything less than fully alert when he met the rest of the rebels. This was no time for his exhausted ramblings; he had to be The Leader. 

Taking a deep breath, he walked up to the door, trying not to break pace when Matt opened it before he could knock.

“Hey, glad to see you. Everyone’s here,” Matt said, looking relieved. He turned to the crowd in the main room, waving Peter to the front of the room with a peculiar sense of ceremony. 

For a moment, Peter tried to remember what Nathan would do in a situation like this, how he would present himself, make the most of his authority to cow or charm the crowd as needed… Then he stopped himself. He wasn’t Nathan, and here of all places, he couldn’t be anything _like_ Nathan.

“Hey,” Peter said, feeling very vulnerable as everyone suddenly stared at him. In the back of the room, Matt smiled encouragingly, and in the corner, Micah, Molly, and Monica were looking attentive.

“Thank you for helping us. You guys are the only ones that wanted to fight alongside us,” Peter said finally. “We’re going to be working as hard as we can to free anyone that’s been captured. I don’t want to hurt anyone if we can help it. Sometimes we’re going to help people relocate so they don’t _get_ captured. That’s about the long and the short of what we’re doing.”

Peter tried to lock eyes with everyone once, trying to gauge reactions. Hiro, still tragically powerless, was nevertheless the first person to say yes when Micah has asked. He’d come to help with his determination, a sword, and the full backing of the Nakamura fortune. Whatever else the American government and Peter’s own father had managed to do to Hiro, they hadn’t been able to freeze the assets of the Yamagato Corporation. It was Hiro (or more specifically, his sister Kimiko), who was helping fund the rebels, saving Micah’s technological wizardry for other things. But Peter would have been glad to have Hiro even if he’d come without financial resources. Hiro never, ever quit, and Peter couldn’t have hoped for a better person to help keep them all focused on doing the right thing.

His friend Ando, newly empowered, had gone where Hiro went, considering himself a practical constraint on Hiro’s enthusiasm. He’d try to keep Hiro from doing too much, and his supercharging power would let the limited number of rebels do more than the government could plan for, if necessary.

The next two guys were people who had come at Claire’s recommendation. Peter’s niece had a free pass, one Nathan had given her for some selfish reason, but Claire had been ruthlessly using her special status to help funnel fleeing specials into hiding or rebellion. One of the guys was West Rosen, who’d been at Costa Verde High School with her. Cynical about the government, and very dismissive of the system, he hadn’t taken any real persuasion to join up with the rebels. His power of flight was a godsend for Peter. Now he could afford to use someone else’s power if the need arose, and not permanently lose the ability to fly people out of danger.

The other guy was Alex Woolsey, who honestly just wanted his normal life back. Somehow Claire had managed to convince him to fight, and Peter was glad to have him. Alex managed to be the most normal person here, despite having an ability, and in a weird way, he represented every special in hiding, every person they were fighting for. Peter privately doubting his ability to breathe underwater would ever come in handy, but if Claire said Alex could handle the pressure of being a rebel, then he had to believe her.

Peter suppressed a shudder when he caught Eric Doyle’s amused gaze. He’d heard plenty from Claire about the puppet master, and some of the files Micah had pulled up on him made Peter sick; he’d forbidden Micah and Molly from reading them. Eric had been in Level Five containment for a very good reason, but now he was out, and inexplicably willing to help the rebels. He’d said he was tired of running, tired of being caged, and just wanted the freedom to start up his puppet theater again… Peter wouldn’t have believed him for a second, if Matt hadn’t vouched for him. _Thank God for telepathy,_ Peter thought fervently. At least they wouldn’t have to deal with double agents.

The last person shouldn’t have even been here. By all rights, she should be dead. Elle Bishop shouldn’t have survived Sylar’s very violent way of saying good-bye; cutting into her skull and setting her on fire. By some miracle, a couple on the beach had seen her funeral pyre and managed to get her to the hospital. By another miracle, she’d managed to get the best possible medical care, under her Company medical insurance. By a third miracle, she’d not only managed to survive, but had a lot less damage to show for it than she’d had a right to hope. Elle knew she was out of miracles, out of options, and had no more resources to fall back on. If Peter hadn’t asked her to join the rebels, she would have clawed her way in. She might still be crazy, Peter thought, but at least her somewhat twisted upbringing hadn’t ever included the phrase, “I can’t handle it.”

“When do we start?” Hiro asked simply.

 _“That’s_ your plan to bring down the government?” West asked incredulously.

“What do you want me to do?” Elle demanded.

Peter closed his eyes for a second, tried to see things from everyone’s point of view, and opened them to fix everyone with a frank gaze.

“We’re going to work together, starting right now, because the one thing the government is expecting us to do is all go running around on our own. We’re going to bring down _this program_ by doing exactly the opposite of what they expect us to do. Together,” Peter said. 

Slowly, warily, people started to nod, and Peter leaned forward to share his first plan.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was close to ten p.m. when Mohinder and Luke pulled up behind the rebel base. Which, Luke thought, looked sort of like the cheap motels they’d been staying in for the past two weeks. Mohinder got out of the car without a word, looking rather distracted. Luke followed him to the room on the end of the row. A swift knock on the door brought out a tall, heavyset man with dark hair out from around the corner. 

“Mohinder, thank God, I didn’t know if you were going to make it tonight.” The man stepped up to briefly embrace Mohinder with familiar warmth, while Luke scowled reflexively.

“Molly knew where I was.”

“I know, I just…”

“Worry, I know. It’s ok. Matt, this is Luke.” 

Luke had been looking back and forth between them, picking up on a definite “old married couple” vibe. Yeah, Mohinder probably wasn’t going to have any problems getting together with his ex.

“Luke,” Matt said evenly, nodding his head, and declining to shake hands. “Glad you’re joining us. Let’s get inside.” Looking around quickly, Matt unlocked the door and waved them inside the rebel base.

The base actually _was_ a motel, a fairly crappy one by all respects. Inside, it had been half-gutted, some rooms combined and walls knocked out to make a meeting room and somewhere to cook food. The rest of the rooms seemed to be more or less intact. The place smelled like cheap coffee and nervous sweat. The main room was filled with cheap, little fold-down chairs haphazardly scattered on the crappy floral carpet.

If this was supposed to be the headquarters of the resistance, Luke wasn’t impressed. Even the people scattered around the room didn’t seem very impressive. There weren’t any guns, knives, or propaganda posters, nothing that looked remotely dangerous. Hell, there were _kids_ over in the corner, fiddling around on computers.

“This is _it?_ ” Luke asked. Mohinder nodded, not without a sympathetic grimace. He seemed to get how pathetic this all looked.

“Mohinder!” The brown-haired girl in the corner hopped up and hurled herself at them, all but tackling Mohinder into a hug.

“ _Missed_ you!” she said, unburying her face from his stomach.

“You always knew where I was,” Mohinder said gently, hugging her back and stroking her hair. 

“Yeah, and you were _far away,”_ she said, pulling back to put her hands on her hips. Mohinder was struggling not to smile.

“Well, I’m here to stay for a while,” he promised, and the girl softened enough to hug him again. “Ah Molly, this is Luke Campbell,” Mohinder added quickly.

The girl looked up at Luke curiously, staring like she was trying to memorize his face. 

“Luke Campbell, Luke Campbell, Luke Campbell,” she repeated softly, as if trying to remember something. “Ok, got it. Hi!”

Luke stared at her for a long moment. What the hell had _that_ been about?

“Hi,” Molly repeated impatiently, holding out a hand. Belatedly Luke remembered how to shake hands.

“Uh… hi,” he said. He was at a loss for words; he hadn’t talked to a child in a long time, and just blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Is there anything to eat?”

“Sure! Come on, it’s over here.”

Luke followed her over to the “kitchen,” such as it was, and found himself plied with some kind of stew. Whatever. It was warm and didn’t taste like total crap, so it would do.

Molly ran a bowl over to the curly-haired boy at the computers, leaving Luke alone to eat in silence. Most of the people were shooting him sideways glances, but no one had come over yet. One guy, ugly, fat, and balding, looked older than Luke’s mom. One younger guy, brown-haired, dark-eyed, and arrogant-looking, was maybe a high school senior. Another guy with glasses and dark hair was probably in college. There was a short black girl and a pale blonde in the corner who were the same age. None of them had really looked at him yet. Maybe they didn’t want to meet him. Maybe they already knew what he’d done. Maybe they hated him-.

Luke suddenly heard Mohinder’s words in his head. _You have to care about yourself._

Damn it.

Luke looked at the others again under the cover of his bowl. Maybe they had reasons for not wanting to talk to him right now. Maybe they were waiting for their fearless leader before they officially introduced themselves. These people were apparently going to be his new buddies. Fellow rebels. He wondered if they were all freaks like him. Like Sylar. Like Mohinder…

“What do you do?”

Luke nearly jumped out of his skin when Molly suddenly returned and flopped herself down on the chair next to his.

“Wha?” Luke managed.

“Your ability. Your power,” she clarified. “Micah knows, but he’s busy, so I thought I’d ask.”

 _“You_ have a power?” 

“I find people. I just think of their name or face and I know where they are.”

Luke had a suddenly reckless desire to see if she could find Sylar. Quickly he shoved it aside, and foundered about for some kind of answer.

“I- uh…” Luke began.

“Molly!” the curly-haired kid called. “Can you help me?”

“Ok, ok. That’s Micah,” she added quickly. “Talk to you later!”

Under the cover of his bowl, Luke watched the two kids. Despite their youth, everyone that passed by seemed to treat them and the black girl (whose name was Monica, he discovered after eavesdropping a bit) with some respect. Like they were in charge or something. It was weird.

Across the room, Mohinder and Matt were in some involved conversation, and everyone else was either talking quietly with each other or sitting in silence. After several long minutes, Molly abruptly looked up.

“Peter’s coming!”

“Clear on scanners,” Micah reported absently.

Matt looked up, getting a faraway look in his eye. “We’re clear.”

The door opened to reveal a dark-haired guy with a thin face, his black jacket zipped all the way up. He was maybe a couple years younger than Mohinder, and very pretty, but also looked exhausted.

“Well?” Matt asked.

“They wouldn’t go. I tried. I gave them your papers, Micah, but they just wouldn’t go. It- I just warned them,” he said, hanging his head.

“You did your best, I know,” Mohinder said sympathetically. “Are you all right?”

“Tired. Just- Who’s he?” Peter asked.

“I’m Luke.” Standing up, Luke answered for himself. He was tired of being the kid people had to drag along, even if was for a good reason this time. If he was going to fight, if he was going to prove he belonged here, then he didn’t need to be introduced like an inconvenient relative. 

“Peter,” the man said by way of introduction, stumbling slightly as he leaned over to shake Luke’s hand, looking him square in the eye. “I’m glad you came.”

Luke shook Peter’s hand, feeling confused. Peter actually sounded one hundred percent sincere about it, which felt… odd. Good, but odd.

“I’m kinda dead right now, sorry. I’ve really got to sit down for a bit. Hey, everyone, this is Luke. Let him know who you are at some point.” Peter took a deep breath, and swayed on his feet. “Let’s pack it in people. Watches as normal.”

As if they’d been waiting for Peter to make any kind of move, the rebels began to slowly make their way to their rooms, the dark-haired guy and the black girl lingering by the computers.

“Hey, I’m Monica, and that’s Alex,” the girl said, after she’d caught Luke’s attention. She smiled sympathetically at him. “We’re on first watch. Don’t worry, you’ll end up on one eventually, but tonight you get to sleep in.” 

Luke blinked at them in confusion.

“We take turns on watch so the hunters can’t sneak up on us,” Alex elaborated, tapping the computers. Luke could see the screens showed feeds from dozens of security cameras. Alex wearily took off his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose as the other rebels drifted towards their rooms.

“That guy’s West,” Alex said, pointing at the guy Luke’s age. “The older guy is Eric. Don’t talk to him. Seriously, just don’t.” 

West, Luke noted, clearly had “arrogant jerk” written all over him, and Eric seemed like the kind of guy you’d meet in a very seedy bar and immediately regret encountering. The blonde had managed to vanish before introducing herself, much to Luke’s regret.

“Who’s the-?” Luke started to ask about the blonde when Mohinder suddenly appeared at his elbow.

“Luke,” Mohinder said softly, nodding briefly at Monica and Alex. He pointed Luke in the direction of a room at the end of the hall beyond the common room. “That room is yours.” Luke was about to voice a question when Mohinder smiled at him tentatively, and entered a different room with Matt. Tightening his jaw, Luke walked down the hall and pushed open the door to his room. To his non-surprise, he had the room to himself.

_Figures._

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mohinder had been grateful beyond reason when Matt had calmly accepted that Mohinder would share his room. He’d been even more touched when he saw Matt hadn’t moved in a second bed, or a cot for Mohinder to sleep in. For the first time in months, Mohinder had slept the entire night, lulled by the warmth of Matt beside him, of his heavy arm slung over him.

But no amount of graceful, quiet understanding was going to put off the two of them having a serious conversation the next morning. Matt was owed some answers, and Mohinder had to give them. As soon as they were both properly awake with coffee, Matt had dragged Mohinder to the little office off the main room, so the rest of the rebels, now awake and struggling to find breakfast, couldn’t interrupt them. 

“Mohinder, what did you do?” Matt asked with trepidation, and no preamble. Mohinder’s hesitation and brief glance over to Luke probably told Matt even more than anything he might have mentally overheard. There was no use trying to prevaricate on what deeds Matt was asking about; it was clear from his face. 

“Jesus,” Matt swore. “Mohinder, you’re nearly _twice_ his age. He’s _seventeen_ ; that’s below the age of consent in some states.”

“That didn’t stop Sylar,” Mohinder said sharply, not wanting to hurt, but needing Matt to understand. “Read my mind Matt. _Tell_ me if I took advantage of an uncertain child or offered comfort to an abused young man.”

Matt looked positively green, and also ashamed. He pulled Mohinder further inside so they could barely be seen from the other room. “I’m not going to go digging through your brain, ok? Sorry, this just came as a shock. Just… tell me what happened,” Matt coaxed, looking troubled.

“He thought he had to pay,” Mohinder said flatly. In his mind he saw Luke parading himself in the hotel room, presenting everything he had to offer with the businesslike swagger of a prostitute. “He thought it was normal to pay for food and lodgings with whatever I demanded of him. He was actually nervous and upset when I told him he didn’t have to do that. He thought something was wrong with him, or me. Sylar taught him that. Sylar, and the rest of his life.” 

Matt’s lips thinned in anger, but now it wasn’t directed at Mohinder. This was Officer Parkman, uncovering an injustice.

“He’d never been kissed, never had any kind of intimacy in any way other than payment, pain, and humiliation. I just wanted to help him, to show him it didn’t have to be that way after what Sylar had done with him. I’m sorry I… I never meant to hurt you Matt,” Mohinder said softly, uncertainty and a hint of fear in his voice. From the other side of it, it had to look so strange, and never mind that Matt could read Mohinder’s intentions. 

“Mohinder… I… yeah, I see what you were doing and if… it had to be someone, I’m glad it was you. But how’s he… I mean, are we…?” Matt started to pull away, and Mohinder reached out to him.

Mohinder touched the side of Matt’s face, leading them into a familiar kiss, relaxing and reaffirming what they’d built up together so many months ago, and had let go in the face of reckless experimentation, unexpected travel, new loves, and forced loyalties. 

_No more steps backward, I swear,_ Mohinder thought fiercely, and he knew Matt heard him. A simple offer of comfort between them when they’d started living together had become so much more. Mohinder had found he didn’t want to let that go. Being with Luke had been for all the reasons Mohinder had said, and also for more. To prove to himself that he could still be kind, that he was still capable of affection after what he’d done to himself. 

Neither Matt nor Mohinder let go until something had tentatively fallen back into place, reestablished by touch, glance, and thought. Matt let him go reluctantly, both of them knowing they had a new place to start from, as fragile as it was.

“So where does this leave Luke?” Matt whispered. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to him.”

“He knows about you and me; I explained it as best I could. I was hoping he’d be able to find someone else. He’s a brat, but I think he’s a decent enough person underneath. I don’t think he’ll ever be a Peter Petrelli, but he’s definitely going to be more than what everyone else assumed he would become.”

Matt halted Mohinder for a second and looked over his shoulder into the other room. “He’s uh… talking to Elle,” he reported.

Mohinder put one hand over his face. “Well, this is going to be a disaster.”


	2. Chapter 2

Luke thought he had things figured out when Mohinder went to talk to Matt. There was a definite possessiveness in the heavy guy’s demeanor, an air of “hands off, he’s mine” that Luke recognized from high school. So… Mohinder had been sleeping around, like he’d said. The old part of Luke told him, “Typical, you find something good and it turns out to be shit.” That brought the usual feelings of indifference covering jealousy and bitter disappointment.

But a new part of him pointed out Mohinder had warned him he was “with” Matt. And Mohinder had never declared his everlasting sole devotion to Luke, nor had he ever said he never wanted to see him again. As a matter of fact, Mohinder had explained, with as much patience and gentleness as he had displayed with Luke’s body, that Luke could come to him with any question, at any time. He’d said he’d wanted to show Luke real affection, and had meant every word about admiring Luke’s strength. And he’d carefully said he needed to talk with Matt about their relationship, and he wouldn’t hold anything back.

Luke swallowed hard. As difficult as it was, Luke decided to try to shelve his resentment and withhold judgment for a bit. But that wasn’t going to stop him from seeing who else was available, like Mohinder had obliquely suggested. Just in case. Despite being burned multiple times, Luke didn’t necessarily like being alone. And after learning that being with someone didn’t have to involve humiliation and pain, Luke was more than eager to expand his horizons. 

He wasn’t precisely picky when it came to partners, but he knew what he liked. Luke had zero interest in the kids; he wasn’t some kind of sick molesting freak. The black girl, Monica, moved with a self-confidence that told him she would be the one to come to _him_ , if she ever got interested. And she definitely wasn’t right now. Eric, the ugly older guy that everyone avoided, creeped Luke out. _Not even if he was the last guy on earth,_ Luke promised himself.

West reminded him of some of the self-righteous assholes from his school, not to mention the fact that he seemed to be violently straight. _Bet he’s one of those guys that ends up asking his girlfriend to tie him to the bed and begs to call her “Mommy,”_ Luke thought vindictively. Alex was just too damn normal to think of approaching. Luke didn’t do normal. The pretty guy, Peter, was a definite possibility. He looked like someone who wouldn’t mind it if things got a little rough. But since he was the leader, and that cut substantially down on his free time. Luke hated being interrupted.

That left the pretty blonde in the corner, the one who hadn’t bothered to introduce herself. Luke sidled around to size her up, somewhat amazed to see she was flawed with light pink burn scars on one hand, traveling up underneath her sleeve, and had a faint red line across her forehead. But other than that, she reminded him of the Homecoming Queen, long-haired, lithe, and beautiful. Usually too high a caliber for him, but anyone was worth a shot at this point. 

“Hey.” 

She looked up at him, surprised. “Hey, new guy.”

“Luke,” he offered.

“Elle,” she said, scrutinizing him carefully. Her long hair was half hiding her face, and Luke could see more burn scars running up the side of her neck, mostly hidden by her hair and collar. But even though she was wearing a long-sleeved, high-collared suit, it didn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination. Luke wondered at why she was sitting alone. He sat without being invited, and her look turned to one of cat-like curiosity. “How’d you end up here? No one does unless everything’s fucked up.”

Luke was starting to like her already. So far she was full of at least fifty percent less bullshit than anyone he’d ever met.

“Got left behind,” Luke muttered, suddenly not sure he wanted to get into details. Yeah, that was bullshit too, but saying he’d been hanging out with a super-powered serial killer might not go over so well.

“Me too,” Elle said, her tone bitter. “Except the guy that did me cut me up and lit me on fire before splitting.”

For a half-second, Luke wondered if there was any possibility… No. No way it could have been Sylar. That would have been too easy.

“That sucks,” Luke commiserated. In a weird way, he wished Sylar had bothered to give him the same kind of closure. At least then they’d definitely be _done_.

“Yeah…” Elle trailed off, and Luke wondered if he could put a hand on her without her glaring at him.

At that moment the door banged open, and she jumped up in alarm, hands blazing with blue electricity.

That was the hottest thing he’d seen since Sylar. Luke suddenly developed a massive crush.

“Sorry!” the taller of the two men in the doorway called. “Wind.”

“Ando, don’t _do_ that,” Matt said, color slowly returning to his face as he popped out of the side room.

“I _said_ they were coming, but you weren’t listening!” Molly said indignantly. 

Matt blushed a little as he shut the door, and everyone seemed to ease down from DEFCON 4. 

“Hiro, Ando,” Peter said, coming up to greet them. “Good to have you back.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Sorry about that, Molly,” Matt said in apology. He had Mohinder had been so deep in their own conversation that he actually _hadn’t_ heard her, and that wasn’t just dangerous for the rebels, that was incredibly rude. Molly would have worked herself to the bone to keep everyone here safe, and it was Matt’s job to make sure she didn’t. If he didn’t make her rest, she wouldn’t.

“We had to talk about some things,” Mohinder added carefully, sitting down in a chair behind her. He picked up her atlas without being asked, and spread it out on his lap for her to see, like he had with her homework back when they’d been a strange little family.

“Are things ok?” she asked, anxiously peering at both of them.

“Yes, sweetheart” Mohinder said instantly, putting an arm around her. Matt leaned forward to encircle them both with his arms, hugging hard. 

Being such close friends with Micah, he and Molly talked a lot, having forged a bond with their desire to help, their unflappable purpose… and the fact they were both orphans. Micah at least had Monica, and had other family out there too. Molly just had Matt and Mohinder, and she couldn’t stand to lose either of them. With Mohinder gone for so long, even after she’d wrangled her way back to the States, Matt knew she’d been thinking the worst, that their little family was gone.

“We’re ok. We’re together, and we’re not leaving you,” Matt promised, and felt matching surges of relief and love from both of them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peter ran a hand through his hair nervously, on one hand happy he had all the rebels back under one roof, and on the other nervous for the same reason. He knew it was dangerous to put all his eggs in one basket, but was just paranoid enough to worry when his people were out of sight. The first week had been brutal in trying to get all of the disparate personalities to mesh, and the second week only marginally less so. 

But if Peter had learned anything from the past two years, it was that the things about himself he’d always been told were weaknesses, his empathy, his compassion, his tendency to take the weight of the world on his shoulders, could become strengths. Nathan would have tried to charm or overwhelm everyone; Peter wanted to make sure he understood everyone. And no, the effect wasn’t as fast as when Nathan turned on his snake-oil salesman routine full-blast, but Peter thought that it would last longer. He might worry about his people’s safety, but he didn’t worry too much about getting backstabbed.

“The place is secure,” Hiro was saying, handing Peter an address. “They were happy to get the work. They seemed, um… to have done it before?” 

Peter smiled. Hiro might have not liked acting like a businessman, but he could pull it off very well when he wanted to, particularly when Ando was willing to act like a translator and lackey. And as a businessman, Hiro could legitimately buy property, particularly if he looked like a slightly shady businessman who dealt only in cash. Anyone who would buy from him wouldn’t be recording his face and reporting it to the government.

“Survivalists,” Peter explained. “They’re big in Montana. Outfitting a bunker for a dozen people is probably something they do every month.”

That bunker would be their back-up shelter in case the hunters found this one. Effectively, they had a bolthole, and Peter heaved a mental sigh of relief. That lifted a huge weight off his shoulders. If everything went badly today, at least some of them would be able to escape.

“Ah,” Hiro said, still not looking like he quite got it, and shrugged.

“Don’t worry about it,” Peter said, and took a deep breath. “Micah just got the latest intelligence. We have a convoy to raid.”

Hiro perked up at that as Peter waved the rest of the rebels over. This would be their fifth convoy raid, and their first since Mohinder had returned. This time, the odds would be more in their favor. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Luke settled in his chair at the back of the room as Peter called the group together, laying out maps and pictures on the table with grim-faced purpose. Everyone else was hovering around the table, with the sole exception of Elle, and Luke didn’t want to look overeager or uncool to her. 

“The specials are being held in this convoy, all four of them,” Peter said, pointing at the satellite pictures of a line of heavily-armored cars and trucks. “They’ll have to stop once Mohinder and I block the road, but that’ll put them on alert. Once the convoy stops, Elle and I will distract the front vehicles with Mohinder. Micah, there’s almost no electronic coverage on that road for you, so Matt, I’m going to need you to check for nasty surprises. Eric, you’ll have the guards on the truck itself. Alex, West, and Monica, you’ll be on extraction after helping Eric. Hiro and Ando, we need you back here to get everyone out in case someone doubles back to the safe house. Micah and Molly, keep us up-to-date in case anyone gets a message out, ok?”

Luke usually didn’t care for team sports, and in the normal course of things he didn’t give a shit about other people, but Mohinder and Elle would be out there during this raid, and Luke had had his fill of being left behind.

“Hey, what am I supposed to do?” he asked.

Peter looked at him oddly. Not badly, not like he thought Luke was an idiot for even asking, more like he hadn’t expected Luke to volunteer. At all. “Well, what can you do?”

“It’s uh… like microwaves,” Luke stammered. He hadn’t actually thought about what he’d be _doing_ during this thing.

Peter smiled in satisfaction, and glanced over at Elle and Mohinder briefly. “I want you to go after the electronic and computer equipment in the vehicles. Fry everything you can so it takes them longer to regroup. That’ll make this go a hell of a lot faster if we don’t have to keep checking our backtrail.”

“Blow shit up? There,” Luke said, feeling satisfied. Mohinder snuck a glance at Luke, as if he’d expected Luke to object, or at least to want to help take out the guards. And honestly, Luke did, but he wasn’t going to say so out loud. He could at least try to spare himself the “psycho” label as long as possible. Here he could just… help where it was needed. Maybe he’d impress Elle…

\-----

“He’s so calm he’s scaring me,” Mohinder muttered, strapping his bulletproof vest tightly, watching Luke fumble with the straps until Elle came over to help him. “Or he could be scared to death inside. I just don’t know.”

“He’s not thinking about being scared right now.” Matt paused and slid a sideways glance over to Luke. “He could go either way, you know. If he decides to go back to Sylar, we have a problem.”

“I understand-,” Mohinder started defensively. How could Matt think Luke would go back to that killer, after what he’d told him?

“Mohinder, I don’t think you do. Elle is here, _you’re_ here, Molly, Peter, and Hiro are here; it’s like a rogue’s gallery of people Sylar wants to kill if Luke ends up deciding he can’t handle being a rebel and goes back to what he understands. And then there’s Ando…”

Mohinder blinked in confusion at the apparent _non sequitur_. “I could understand Sylar wanting to go after Hiro, but why would he want to kill Ando?”

“Daphne… Daphne took one of the vials of the formula before Pinehurst blew up. Ando took it, trying to get Hiro’s power-.”

“What?!” Mohinder broke in, confused beyond all reason and measure.

“This’ll take too long to explain. Hang on.”

Mohinder gasped as Matt practically dumped the information into his head. It took a moment or two, but finally things became clear, like how one _knew_ something in a dream. Hiro trapped in the past with Claire, Ando’s new power allowing Daphne to travel in time…

Mohinder’s mind skittered over the knowledge of Daphne’s death, the loss of Hiro’s powers, and him and Ando joining the resistance, thinking they could be useful…

“Supercharging,” Mohinder breathed, glanced over at Luke, and shuddered. “If Sylar knew about that-.”

“Forget the rest of us; he’d be unstoppable. I know you want Luke to trust us, and yeah, I know he’s been lied to a lot, but if anything happens and he decides to go back-.”

“I’ll keep quiet.” Mohinder swallowed hard. “But I don’t want him to go back. I think it would kill him.”

“Then let’s make sure he never has to. Head in the game, Mo, you’re our star linebacker,” Matt said, smiling briefly.

“Right,” Mohinder whispered.

\-----

Luke found himself traveling with Peter, Mohinder, and Elle to the raid site, a more or less perfect deal as far as he was concerned. Even though Peter was in charge of their little group, he couldn’t dampen Luke’s spirits. 

Peter, on the other hand, was grim-faced and tense as he parked the car well off the road. He and Mohinder trekked back up the road, searching for a good-sized tree, trailed by Elle and Luke. Once they’d found a suitable behemoth, they waited beside it, glancing down the road nervously. The dark, pine-scented air under the trees was quiet save for a few animal noises and their breathing. While they waited, Mohinder whispered the plan to Luke, not just what he was going to do, but the others too. Privately, Luke was pretty impressed at how Peter was having everyone use their powers together, considering the freak show he’d gathered together.

“Luke,” Peter said, breaking into Mohinder’s explanation. “If things get bad and you have to use your power on someone, we only have one rule: don’t kill. We don’t want the government to think we’re any more dangerous than they already do, and we definitely don’t want them to make martyrs out of the hunters. Remember, these men have families too; they’re just doing their jobs.”

Luke suddenly remembered Agent Simmons’ shocked face when he’d been collapsing to the floor, cooking in his own juices as Luke fried him from the inside out. It had been the most powerful thing Luke had ever felt in his life. Maybe he wouldn’t tell Peter about that. Ever.

\-----

Ahead of them, the second group of rebels was hiding in the woods, ready to take out the van the instant it stopped. West was already flying above, feeding information to Micah about the convoy’s location, as Monica and Alex waited nervously under the cover of low-hanging pine braches. Unlike Matt and Eric, they’d have to confront any problems with their bodies, rather than their minds. The brunt of any mistakes would be theirs to bear

Their communicators crackled, and Micah’s voice was suddenly in their ear. “They’re close, two minutes!”

\-----

Peter reached out and touched Mohinder’s hand, a flare of dull orange light showing he was borrowing the scientist’s power. As one, the two turned and slammed into their chosen tree. Two, three, four, five ground-shuddering hits, and the huge pine toppled over the road, blocking the way.

Peter grinned as Mohinder darted back into cover by Luke, brushing bits of pine bark out of his hair and clothes. Elle high-fived Peter, giving her power to him, and both stepped out into the road behind the tree, hands sparking. Luke felt his breathing getting harder as he waited with Mohinder. He hadn’t done anything like this since he’d been with Sylar, and he shivered in anticipation. And maybe a few other things. Seeing everyone using their powers so openly, and with such confidence, was tickling him in all the right places. 

“Steady,” Mohinder murmured in his ear. “Check your targets. Be safe.”

Luke snorted at the last comment; the rebels were about to take on an armed prison convoy. Safe was not on the menu.

“They’re thirty seconds away. West, come down now,” Micah whispered. Somewhere down the road, the flyer was making his descent. “I’m blind now, handing over to Matt.”

“Everyone else move up. Peter, Elle, _now!_ ” Matt shouted over the comm.

Luke could hear the sounds of the engines for a brief second before Peter and Elle went into action. Lightning crashed all over the road, illuminating the place as bright as day. Screeching brakes signaled the convoy’s halt, and angry shouts announced the hunters’ advance. Muffled _whumps_ sounded from the hunters’ rifles, but being unable to see Peter and Elle meant their shots went wide.

“I’ll be back,” Mohinder said quietly, and rushed out of hiding, springing into the glare like a leopard. 

Luke couldn’t see anything, but from the shouts of pain and dismay, things were not going so great for the bad guys. Since no one was watching him, Luke pulled his teeth back in a feral smile and tried very hard not to light the grass on fire. He’d get his chance in a second.

\-----

Matt and Eric watched from the shadows as the remaining guards, only twelve this time, re-deployed to guard the prison truck. Matt concentrated on them fiercely, inserting the insistent thought that, _We’re not here. There’s no one here. The woods are empty, but stay on guard, stay here, there’s no one here…_ He sighed in relief when the hunters’ gazes slid off Monica and Alex as they emerged from cover.

Monica quickly palmed the key off one of the oblivious commandos, and tossed it to Alex. Alex’s ability was completely useless nine times out of ten on these raids, but he was tall, strong, fast, and had plenty of endurance. That more than made up for his limited power. He was one of the only ones who could keep up with Monica on an extended chase. Alex reached the door at the same time as West touched down on the roof. Nodding at Monica, Alex opened the door, and Eric stepped forward to take care of the guards inside. 

Matt’s power would let him hide people in plain sight, amongst other things, but he could only hold so many minds at once. He was also the one who would be searching the woods for active minds, making sure they didn’t get outflanked. The rebels had found it was best to save his strength and attention for the most important things, relying on any other powers they had to help them instead.

As the door swung open, Eric Doyle stepped forward, putting his hands up. The four soldiers inside suddenly imitated his motion, and Eric smiled his creepy little smile. Matt had never looked into Eric’s mind farther than necessary to make sure he wasn’t lying. He never wanted to look deeper. He prayed to God he’d never _have_ to.

In synch, the soldiers bent and placed their hands on the shackles each prisoner was wearing. After a couple of raids, the hunters had started to use biometric locks on the cuffs in an effort to thwart the rebels. While Mohinder could have pulled the cuffs apart, or Matt could have convinced the hunters to unlock the cuffs, or the rebels could have knocked the hunters unconscious and placed their hands on the locks, that took valuable time. Matt and Mohinder’s talents were needed elsewhere in the raids; better to have Eric _make_ the hunters free the captives themselves. It was faster and safer, even if watching Eric Doyle in action gave Matt a chill down his spine.

Monica and Alex moved in immediately, removing the captives’ drug harnesses and getting them out. This time the captives consisted of a middle-aged woman, two college-aged men, and a twelve year-old girl.

“I got the kid,” West said instantly. He jumped down and gathered her up, floating skyward without a second glance. Matt privately sighed, but didn’t say anything. West was all about destroying the system, but wouldn’t put himself into too much trouble to do it. The guy wasn’t exactly a coward but… 

Monica and Alex started moving the other three, still groggy from the sedative, into protective cover. They’d hustle the group through the woods to where Alex had hidden a vehicle, and hopefully have the former prisoners well away from here by the time the sun rose.

Still smiling his superior little smile, Eric had the guards cuff themselves into the van, and then locked the door from the outside so he wouldn’t have to listen to their yelling once his power was released.

Matt reinforced the notion that _no one was there_ to the other guards as Eric made his escape, and then faded into the brush behind him. Hopefully he’d be able to hold their minds while Peter and the others finished doing their jobs. Then it would be up to Peter, Elle, and Mohinder to take these men down while Matt and Eric escaped.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 _“We’re clear! Trash the gear!”_ Matt’s voice sounded over the comm. Luke started to move out of cover, hands already warm, eager to destroy.

Peter and Elle stopped their lightning display, revealing a half-dozen fallen hunters, and standing amongst them, Mohinder.

“Luke, come on!” Mohinder said, gesturing to him. Luke ran out of hiding as Peter and Elle moved around behind the front vehicle. The lightning display started up again on the other side, to shouts of surprise.

“I have to go help them. Just destroy everything you can,” Mohinder urged, and went to join the electro-brigade.

Luke took a look inside the car, seeing consoles full of winking lights, GPS units, computers, and who-the-hell knew what else. Grinning a bit, he let the heat come bursting out of his hands and aimed them at the shiniest, most expensive-looking things he could find. Plastic melted and ran as he swept his hands over the gear, the black and gray ooze dripping to the floor with fleshy little _slaps_. In less than five minutes the inside of the truck was a total wreck.

Popping his head out, Mohinder was there, one side of his face wet with blood. Grimacing, he waved Luke out of the car.

“The other car, and the van, then we’re done. Duck!”

Luke fell flat to the ground as Mohinder lunged as a hunter that had popped up behind him, wrestling him to the ground with brutal efficiency. “Luke, go!”

Electricity crashed through the clearing as Peter and Elle tried to deal with the rapidly falling number of hunters Matt had left behind. With the element of surprise against them, the hunters weren’t going to get the upper hand this time. Or at least Luke hoped so. Everyone seemed to be kicking ass as he dashed across the road to the truck and threw himself inside the cab. He quickly played his hands over the console, reducing it to steaming mush, trying to ignore the light show outside. 

A thrown body smashed into the windshield, making Luke start and bring his hands up defensively. The semi-conscious hunter screamed as Luke’s microwaves pulsed right through the glass, and Luke abruptly remembered Peter’s admonition. Pulling his power in, he leapt from the truck and ran for the last car, melting the contents in less than thirty seconds. As he turned from the last car, a grin of triumph on his face, Mohinder found him.

“Everything ok?”

“Yeah, everything’s fried and-.” Luke suddenly screamed as a burning pain scorched his leg. One of the hunters had gotten a lucky shot off, and the shock of it sent Luke to his knees. Mohinder turned and lunged for the man, grabbing him by the vest and hurling him into the trees. Actually _through_ some of the trees, Luke noted through the haze of pain. After that, everything got very quiet.

“Peter! Peter we need you!” Mohinder called. “Luke, stay still, Peter’s on his way.”

Luke twisted around, saw blood covering the back of his thigh, and almost threw up.

Peter came running through the trees moments later, Elle on his heels, both of their hands illuminating the road with blue electricity. Seeing the blood, Peter dropped the charge and reached inside his jacket, pulling out what looked like bandages.

“Luke, what happened?”

“I dunno! One of them shot me-,” Luke gasped, trying to keep still as Peter bent over him. While most of him was freaking out over the pain, there was still a part of him that was thinking that at least Sylar hadn’t ever gotten him shot. Beaten, fucked raw, smacked around, but not shot…

“That’s not a dart wound. Damn it,” Peter muttered, trying to clear away the blood with practiced professionalism. He reminded Luke strongly of some of the ER nurses that used to patch him up after childhood “accidents.”

“They’ve started using live rounds?” Mohinder asked, sounding aghast.

“We’re running out of time,” Peter said under his breath, and seemingly to himself. Luke tried to keep himself from getting sick as Peter wrapped a bandage around his leg to stop the bleeding, biting his lip to keep from crying out. “Luke, this isn’t too bad, it’s only a flesh wound, but I don’t want you to put any weight on it. Elle?”

Luke wanted to crawl into a hole and die as she moved up next to him. He’d wanted to impress her, not get shot and have to bleed on her! 

“C’mon, tiger,” Elle said, getting under his shoulder on his bad side. “Everyone gets shot at least once.”

Luke tried to smile a bit at her as she helped lever him up, and felt the blood roar in his ears. The world went black around him as he abruptly passed out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Luke woke up staring at a cracked and water-stained ceiling, feeling cold, tired, and his leg aching like a sonofabitch.

“Hey, tiger.”

Luke jerked to the side to see Elle sitting in a chair next to his bed, reading a crumpled magazine. He flushed when he realized he was _not_ in the clothes he’d worn to the raid. And while being only in boxers and a t-shirt with a hot blonde by his bedside had been the start of some great daydreams, his daydreams had never included wishing he could just chop off his leg to stop it hurting so much.

“Ow,” Luke said, gritting his teeth. _Yeah, that’s just fucking brilliant, Campbell. Sure to get all the hot ladies and dudes to your room. Bleed over them and then whine like a bitch._

Elle gave him a slightly twisted smile and suddenly leaned over the bed, her hands on either side of his shoulders, her breasts pressed right against him. Leaning down close enough to practically be breathing his air, she brushed her lips against his. Luke could barely breathe. He hadn’t even had daydreams about something like this before… And then she shocked him, sparks leaping from her lips to his.

“Hey!” Luke yelled in protest, and Elle pulled back, giggling madly, swinging her hair back in front of her face..

“I bet your leg doesn’t hurt so much right now, does it?” she asked.

Well, it didn’t, but-.

“Elle!” Peter said sharply, pushing open the door to the room.

“I know, I know, don’t play with my food,” Elle said, rolling her eyes with the air of someone who’d heard the same speech too many times before.

“Please,” Peter said, a note of genuine pleading in his voice. Luke noticed Peter had the most egregious “puppy eyes” expression he’d ever seen.

Elle softened slightly, not immune to a heretofore-unknown Peter power. “Ok, fine.”

“Hey, Luke, I need to change your bandages. Is it ok if Elle helps?”

Luke glared at Peter. He couldn’t possibly be serious. Luke had a _gunshot wound_ to his _thigh_ and Peter wanted to have Elle put her hands on him? Was he insane?

“Better not,” Elle opined, not even trying to hide a grin. “I’d hate to get the bandages all sticky.”

Luke watched her leave, and then glared at Peter relentlessly until he cracked.

“Sorry.”

“You’re a dick, you know that?” Luke said in irritation.

“Sorry. I’m not trying to be,” Peter repeated, sounding sincere, and pulled out bandages and bottles from a bag he’d brought in with him. 

Gingerly Luke turned himself over, hissing in pain. He hated the idea of a near-stranger trying to clean out a wound in such a vulnerable place, but he was reasonably sure Peter wouldn’t hurt him. Not like Sylar. Sylar would have either left him to die, or hauled him along and made him tend his wounds by himself. Peter was actually trying to _help_ him. Besides, if Peter did one damn thing Luke didn’t like, he could fry him. And they both knew it. That kept things the most equal Luke had ever had.

“You’re the first person Elle’s said more than two sentences to in two weeks,” Peter said.

Luke grunted noncommittally as Peter carefully pulled off the old bandage, and then hissed as some stinging liquid hit the wound.

“She’s barely even recovered. She shouldn’t even be alive, but she is. She hadn’t really talked to anyone until you showed up four days ago.”

“ _Four_ days?” Luke asked incredulously.

“You’ve been out for a day. You really just got grazed, but it was deep. You lost some blood. You’ll be fine, I promise,” Peter said, and taped new bandages in place. “All done.” Luke waited, tensing just in case, but Peter hadn’t touched a single patch of skin he hadn’t needed to. When he heard Peter moving away again, he relaxed a hair.

Luke carefully rolled over, and saw Peter taking off latex gloves. He was so confused he didn’t even know where to start. He had a hot blonde, damaged and scarred, that seemed to like him enough to come out of her shell. He’d gotten shot, and was getting better care now than he ever had for any other injury in his life. And the leader of the resistance was waiting on him hand and foot.

“Luke, I’m sorry. I had no idea things had gotten that bad. With the hunters,” Peter clarified, with a hangdog expression. “I don’t know when they switched from darts to bullets, and we should have been more careful in making sure they were all down.”

Luke wasn’t used to have people apologizing to him. At all. He wasn’t even quite sure what to say. “It’s ok. I mean, you didn’t know, like you said.”

“I just didn’t want you to think I was taking you for granted. This is a volunteer outfit,” Peter said with a crooked smile, seeming to be relieved that Luke wasn’t mad. Luke shrugged at that; what other choice did he have, really?

“Hey, uh, about Elle…”

“Yeah?”

“She’s really only talked to me?”

“I think she likes you,” Peter said. 

Luke took a deep breath. “If, if she’s still around-.”

“Luke, she was waiting for you to wake up. I’ve never seen her do that for anyone,” Peter broke in abruptly. “I’ll tell her I’m done. Don’t try to put weight on that leg yet, ok?”

Luke waited until Peter had left the room, then frantically ran his hands through his hair to try to make it look like something other than bed-head. Just when he’d barely finished, the door opened again, and Elle slipped inside, shutting it behind her.

“Hey, tiger,” she said, smiling, and Luke’s stomach flipped over.

“Hey,” Luke said. Flailing around for another topic of conversation, he got out, “Sorry for bleeding on you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, moving her chair just _that_ much closer to his bed. “I got shot about the same place once; really can’t help bleeding on someone.”

“How?” Luke asked, fascinated.

Elle bent her head a bit so her hair hid most of the burn scars on the side of her face, and looked at the floor. Luke could see her back heaving, like she was trying to draw in a steadying breath. Impulsively, Luke let his bare arms turn over, exposing the silvery scars from cigarettes and broken bottles. Elle looked up at them, at him, and put a hand on his arm. Her fingers looked so small, and they felt painfully warm and good on his skin.

“How about I tell you about something else instead?” she asked, with just a tiny hint of pleading. 

“Sure,” Luke said instantly. “Anything.”

\-----

Peter pressed his the back of his head against the wall outside Luke’s room, overhearing the indistinct rumble of the two voices inside rising and falling. He wasn’t used to this; wasn’t used to having a dozen people around him, looking up to him to lead. He’d taken on the role because he felt he had to, and he remembered warning the others that they’d finding themselves doing things they couldn’t even imagine.

Well, Peter couldn’t have imagined he’d ever be playing matchmaker. But… 

“Ah, young love.” Peter turned to find Eric Doyle just emerging from the common room. 

Before Peter could open his mouth, Eric continued, “They really deserve each other, crazy kids.”

Well, Peter had been thinking about the same thing but… Eric just smiled a bit in his direction and slipped into his room.

 _Your approval fills me with shame,_ Peter thought, trying to shake off the skeevy feeling. He might not like Eric, but it didn’t necessary follow that he was wrong about everything. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Yeah, and then he said, ‘I don’t think so chickpea!’” Elle was saying, illustrating her story with a sweep of her sparking hand.

“And you fried him?” Luke asked, laughing.

“Just a little. I didn’t want to make much of a mess,” Elle promised, winking at him. 

Luke laughed again, covering his mouth with his hand to keep from waking anyone up. It was almost a week after the raid, and Elle hadn’t missed a day with him. And while she hadn’t repeated that initial little shock-hug she’d done the first day (much to Luke’s profound disappointment), it was just nice to have someone to hang around with and talk to. Luke hadn’t had a friend in… never. And from what Elle had said, she hadn’t either.

“You’re the only person here who doesn’t start freaking out when I talk. I swear, it seems like everyone here is afraid I’m going to accidentally electrocute them. I haven’t done that in over ten years, honestly! Besides, you say what you mean,” she’d said to him at one point.

Luke didn’t feel like he had to hold much back when he talked with her; Elle wasn’t scared of using her powers, didn’t mind a little violence, and had little tolerance for bullshit. She hadn’t been shocked by anything he’d said, not even the things he hadn’t told anyone else but Sylar before. 

He’d honestly begun to wonder if he could tell her about Sylar. Maybe she’d understand. She might be the only one who would. Mohinder knew about Sylar, but Luke didn’t think he understood. Yeah, Sylar had been a violent, abusive son of a bitch, but Luke had gone with him willingly for a reason. Elle might understand; she talked about the “Company” where she’d grown up in the same way. 

Suddenly there was a knock on the door, breaking the moment, and Luke and Elle looked up warily. Mohinder poked his head in, and smiled slightly at the both of them. 

“Elle, sorry, Peter and Hiro wanted to talk to you.”

Elle rolled her eyes and tossed a grin at Luke. “I’ll catch you later, tiger.”

“Later,” Luke said, watching her until she was completely out the door. 

“Are you doing all right?” Mohinder asked, and Luke shook his head, shifting his attention.

“Yeah, I’m ok,” Luke said with a shrug. His leg was still painful and stiff, but it seemed to be healing cleanly. Peter really seemed to know his stuff. 

“Luke, I need to talk to you about Sylar,” Mohinder said, sitting down in the corner by Luke. 

“What about him?” Luke asked warily, trying to cover a start. This was the first time since they’d come here that Mohinder had even mentioned Sylar’s name.

“A lot of people here have suffered at his hands, and I wanted you to know before you talk about him,” Mohinder started. “I know you’ve been talking with Elle, becoming friends with her. That’s fine,” Mohinder hastened to add, when Luke almost broke in with angry protest. “But she’s had a lot of bad experiences in her life, and I don’t think you want to inadvertently bring up something painful, right?”

Luke nodded slowly and reluctantly, and Mohinder took a deep breath. He looked almost scared.

“Sylar has hurt a great deal of people very badly. He killed Elle’s father, betrayed her, cut and burned her and left her for dead.” Luke looked over at the door where Elle had left, and swallowed hard. “Sylar has tried to kill almost every single person in this building, some of them more than once. And he’s killed over two dozen other people for either their powers, or because they were in his way.”

Luke remained silent, trying to take it all in, his face a total blank.

“You knew him,” Luke accused. How could Mohinder _not_ have known Sylar if he’d been so concerned with “cleaning up Sylar’s mess” when they first met?

Mohinder looked away. “I was trying to warn other people with abilities about Sylar. He got to one of the people just before I did, and pretended he was one of his victims, Zane Taylor, a musician. We traveled together for nearly a week to visit another special in Montana. And for that time he managed to conceal his true identity from me. We… became friends. Then he killed the woman we’d come to see, and I realized who he really was.”

Bitterness seeped into Mohinder voice, and he had to look away for a moment. Luke waited, unmoving, until Mohinder looked at him again.

“Dude, that had to suck,” Luke offered finally.

Mohinder didn’t laugh. “It did.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Luke, wake up!”

Luke flailed out of sleep, blinking as Monica turned on the light.

“Get your clothes on fast, we have to go, now!”

Fear gave him an instant adrenaline shot more effective than any can of energy drink. Grabbing for his clothes, Luke struggled into them as fast as he could, trying to not put too much weight on his injured leg. 

“What happened?” Luke yelled.

“The hunters are coming,” Monica called back, running down the hall. He heard her rousing Micah and Molly out of bed, and then cursing the power cords as she quickly disassembled the computers. With a start, Luke remembered they were the only four rebels home. Everyone else was out on another raid, with Monica and Luke staying behind to keep the kids safe. Luke still couldn’t run; that’s why Peter had suggested he should stay behind, a perfectly reasonable suggestion at the time, and one that had netted him a smoking hot “good-bye” kiss from Elle.

Elle. Oh fuck.

“What about the others?” Luke called, rapidly tying his shoes and limping out into the main room.

“They’re ok, they just can’t get to us in time. They’ll meet us at the new safe house,” Monica said. “Grab those two laptops, here’re the car keys, go out the back door, _move!”_

Any protests Luke had died on his tongue when he saw Micah and Molly breaking down Micah’s computer station with a calm efficiency that spoke of practice. Those kids had _practice_ in running from people that wanted to kill them. That was fucked up, even by Luke’s standards. Limping at top speed, Luke burst out the back door and opened up the car. Monica and the kids were out a few agonizingly long minutes later, and Luke all but burned rubber getting the car down the road. 

“Just make sure we don’t get pulled over, and head north,” Monica said, tightening her seatbelt. “Everyone still alive back there?”

“Yup!” Molly said, a trifle too cheerfully, at least by Luke’s estimation. 

“They’re pulling up on the hill away from the base,” Micah reported, his laptop already open again, checking the feeds from the security cameras all over the property. “They’re pulling out… What the heck is that?”

Monica twisted around in her seat to look at something on the screen, and Luke heard her gasp in shock. “Rocket!”

The entire sky lit up, and in his rearview mirror Luke could see the hotel go up in a Hollywood-style fireball. The shockwave hit a split-second later, making the entire car shiver, and Luke nailed the gas pedal to the floor. Whether or not the police would catch them was completely irrelevant to the fact that they could have been blown to bits without even a single word of warning.

“Oh God, oh God…” Luke chanted softly, forcing his attention back to the road. 

“Peter!” Monica almost shouted into her cell phone. “They blew it up. No warning, no raid, nothing, they just blew up the entire place. Yes, we’re ok. We’re heading to the secondary site. You better get here fast!”

She clicked the phone shut and Luke could hear her shudder.

“There’s enough gas to get us there without refueling. Whatever you do, don’t stop,” Monica whispered, and pulled out a map.

Looking in the rearview mirror at the kids, and still seeing the flames reaching up into the sky, Luke swallowed hard. No one had ever entrusted him with something, or someone, so important. Knuckles white on the steering wheel, he pushed on into the night.

\-----

“Turn off here,” Monica said, pointing the way into the trees, lit by now in the pre-dawn gray light. They’d driven all the way through the night, and with the car on its last gasp of gas, Luke parked in a grove in the middle of the frozen woods, beneath a lean-to of corrugated metal. They were all the way in Montana now, and to his shock, snow had already fallen here. It was scarcely fall, and even though they were going north, Luke hadn’t expected to see the whole area under a blanket of white.

“Ok, half-mile through the woods, into the bunker, and we’re home free,” Monica said, still grim-faced. “We can take it easy, just as long as we don’t do anything to draw attention to ourselves-.”

“We have to move fast,” Molly said suddenly, a faraway look in her eye. “Mr. Danko’s coming.”

“What?!” Monica didn’t quite yell, but Luke would have totally understood if she did. “Danko” was a name he’d heard bantered around a few times; he was the leader of the hunters, and a total cold-hearted son of a bitch, if the rumors were anything to go by.

“He’s up high… in a helicopter. Coming this way,” Molly said positively.

Luke looked behind him. The car was pretty much hidden from above, but if the hunters had infrared or something, it wouldn’t matter how thick the woods were. Four running rebels would be easy targets. The carnage from the safe house was still fresh in his mind.

“Run!” Luke shouted, and began to limp at his fastest pace. Monica didn’t even hesitate, just hurled herself under one arm and began to half-drag him along far faster than he could have managed on his own. Micah and Molly were scampering through the woods as if they were homing pigeons, without even a glance at Monica’s map. 

The woods flew past in a blur of black and white, of skeletal trees and glittering ice. Luke’s shoes and pant cuffs were soaked in no time. He had a huge stitch in his side, and was wheezing like he was about to collapse, but didn’t beg for a break. Just because he couldn’t hear the helicopter didn’t mean it wasn’t close. 

“There! There!” Micah said, pointing to what looked like a snowbank with a small, cave-like opening in the front. He didn’t even hesitate, just crashed right through the snow, Molly on his heels, Monica and Luke right behind. Inside, it was a tunnel that sloped down to a heavy metal door, half-buried in snow-and-ice-covered mounds of earth. There was a small metal box on the wall that Micah grabbed with both hands, eyes closed as he tried to use his powers.

There was a weird whining noise, like overworked machinery, and then nothing.

“The motor can’t move the door!” Micah said, sounding horrified. 

Luke shoved away from Monica, and dropped to his knees in front of the rock-hard frozen dirt. If they didn’t get under cover _now_ , they were either going to get shot, or freeze to death. Luke had no intention of doing either.

“Get back, everyone get back!” he said, and pushed his hands over the earth. Hoping the earth and snow above would hide the heat of what he was about to do, Luke pulsed a double blast of microwaves into the ground. He jerked back when the snow and ice turned to steam, cursing when it scalded his face. Micah leapt for the box again, and this time the door shoved the thawed earth aside. Everyone tumbled in, and the door swung closed behind them.

They lay panting in the darkness for long minutes until someone found the lights. Blinking in the brightness, Luke shoved himself halfway up, and then flopped down again. His leg hurt so badly he didn’t even want to think about moving. 

“Mr. Danko’s above,” Molly whispered, as if talking too loudly would call attention to themselves. “Circling. Circling.”

Everyone waited in tense and painful silence for long minutes. Monica was holding on to Luke’s shoulder, and Micah had her other arm. Molly held onto him as she kept her mental eye focused above them. It seems like almost an hour before Molly finally relaxed. 

“He’s gone,” she said softly. Everyone sagged against each other in boneless relief.


	3. Chapter 3

The rest of the group turned up at the bunker within a day of their safe house blowing up. Grim-faced, Peter explained the latest convoy had been a decoy.

“If Matt hadn’t caught someone in the back of the van thinking about the gun in his ankle holster, they would have gotten us too,” he said. The group of “captured specials” had actually been more hunters, secretly armed to the teeth and ready to kill. 

Mohinder was shaking as Peter told about the botched rescue and they heard about the rocket. He had been responsible for taking out the fake specials, hurling the hard-bitten, well-trained agents into the nearest unyielding surface as Matt (with an assist from Peter) and Eric held the remainder of the hunters at bay. Even that hadn’t been enough, and they’d needed the rest of the group to come in just to get out in one piece. 

Poor Alex was nursing a bad concussion after getting a rifle butt to the head when he’d tried to keep someone off Matt’s back, and at least two of the hunters were probably in the hospital with sword slashes after Hiro had cut them to defend the unconscious Alex. Ando’s supercharging power worked just as well to knock out normal people as it did to power-up specials, and he’d been able to hold his own, though he’d been pretty shaken up after seeing how many people he’d laid out with one panicked burst of red lightning. Elle had laid out as many people with far less remorse, but with a teeth-gritted determination to win that wouldn’t let her fail. West was untouched, but then again he’d never come close enough to the ground to even be seen, let alone hit. That irritated Mohinder, but he didn’t say anything. West had volunteered to help, not throw himself wantonly into danger. 

_Sometimes I think he’s smarter than the rest of us,_ Mohinder thought. Smart enough, at least, to realize that if the hunters had laid one trap for the rebels, why not two? But even in his worst nightmares, Mohinder hadn’t thought they’d blow up a building. If Monica hadn’t gotten them out in time, if Luke hadn’t been able to get them into the bunker… That’s why he was shaking as if he couldn’t stop. 

“What are we going to do now?” Monica asked. She was still sitting with the kids, hovering like if she blinked, they’d disappear.

“We wait,” Peter said, eyes bleak. “We’re not going out again until we know what their next move is. This is-.” Peter cut himself off.

 _-My fault. I should have known, should have stopped it. I’m so sorry,_ Mohinder finished in his head. 

Squaring his shoulders, Peter help up under the burden, straightening his spine under its weight. “I’m sorry. We’re going to hole up here until we know what nasty surprises they’re planning, ok? I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”

Mohinder sighed in relief. He’d been afraid Peter might buckle under all the pressure, and if that happened, he didn’t want to think about what would happen afterward. Matt might have stepped up, but it would be hard working for someone who could change your mind for you. And Mohinder couldn’t handle the responsibility. Even if he’d had an idea of what to do, he didn’t deserve it, not after what he’d done. Let him take the hits he was now built for; it was the least he could do to atone for his sins. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Luke shivered in his seat as he waited for Elle to wake up. It was the second morning after the false raid, and everyone was still sleeping a lot, partly because everyone was exhausted, partially because of the nightmares. Luke had chanced boredom in hanging out in the common room to waking up screaming from bad dreams. Again.

The bunker was smaller than the old base, and much colder. It was far enough beneath the earth to act like a cave, warmer than the freezing woods, but still cold enough to be uncomfortable. Everyone was just bundling up like bears for the winter and trying to deal with it; the alternative was a warm jail cell or a cold grave.

Luke was mostly zoned out, watching Molly and Micah try to find the names of the people who _should_ have been in the false convoy. They had been working industriously since before Luke had been awake, the Styrofoam cups and breakfast bar wrappers attesting to that. Molly grabbed one of the cups as Luke watched, sipped, and made a face.

“Aw, it’s cold,” Molly muttered softly in complaint. She set aside her cup of cocoa with regret and went back to checking her list of names. 

Luke spied it, and had a sudden memory of one winter’s morning when he was about five. His mom had made him cocoa after he’d come in from playing in a snowstorm. She’d smiled at him that day.

Luke reached over and grabbed the cup, holding it between his hands. 

“Go ahead, you can have it. I don’t like it when it’s cold,” Molly said absently.

Luke swallowed and let his power surge through the cup briefly, warming it up.

“Ding,” he said listlessly after a moment, and held it out to her. He’d done the same office for Sylar dozens of times.

Molly blinked when she saw steam rising form the cup, and cradled it carefully in her hands. “Uh…” She took a tentative sip, and smiled in appreciation. “Thanks! That’s handy.”

Sylar had never thanked him before. Never smiled at him either, at least not for things like this. Luke swallowed, trying to get a lump out of his throat, and got up.

“Yeah. I guess. Where’d you get that?”

She pointed to the corner of the room, and Luke went to get his own cup. At least if his back was to the room, no one could see him cry. He didn’t know why it was hitting him so hard today. He’d been injured and nearly killed, and now he was on the run and hiding. He should have wanted to go back to Sylar rather than stay here.

But this was the first place where anyone had ever thanked him for his power, where anyone had been willing to help him if he screwed up, where anyone wanted his company, and only wanted what he would give. He owed them. He owed all of them.

And Luke found he didn’t mind being in their debt. He owed them, her, the truth. Gulping down the scalding hot chocolate, Luke went back to wait for Elle as the other rebels began to wake up. He turned himself away from Mohinder and Matt as they entered, sure that today, of all days, he didn’t want to ask for advice.

\-----

“I have to tell you something,” Luke said, as Elle flopped down next to him in a chair in the corner. His stomach was cramping with nervousness and he took a few deep breaths. He had to tell her, today, now, before he lost his nerve. Things had been going so well, almost _too_ well, at least for him. And considering the situation he was in right now, that was saying something. 

Mohinder had warned him, not in so many words, that talking about Sylar might hurt Elle. But wouldn’t it be better for her to know before she found out for herself? Elle would probably kick his ass if she found out on her own.

“Well? Spit it out, tiger,” Elle said, leaning against him in an attempt to get warm. “Tell me a story.”

Luke hated himself for what he was about to say, but plunged ahead anyway.

“I was with Sylar.”

Elle froze, and turned to look at him, just to make sure he wasn’t shitting her. 

“When?” she asked flatly.

“A couple months ago, he broke into my house… He was the coolest guy I’d ever met. I hated my mom. He wasn’t scared of my power. And when I killed the agent he’d brought, I wanted to go with him,” Luke said, things tumbling out of him in no particular order. He wasn’t making much sense, not even to him, but plunged ahead anyway. “I went with him for two months, because he was trying to find his dad, and I knew where he was. I was _with_ Sylar,” Luke said desperately, not wanting to have to get into specifics.

“And then we got to this place where Sylar had some stupid emo childhood trauma, and he just pinned me to a wall and left me. Didn’t even look back. Just left me… Mohinder found me and brought me here.”

Elle stared at him for a full ten seconds while Luke braced for the impending apocalypse. 

“You were with Sylar?” she repeated, as if just making sure she heard him correctly. She didn’t _sound_ angry…

“Yeah. You’re not mad?” he asked tentatively, stopping his preemptive wincing.

“Are you kidding? I’m relieved!” Elle said, throwing her arms around him. Luke stiffened reflexively and awkwardly hugged her back. This wasn’t bad. Actually, this was several kinds of very _good_. 

“Um… why?” Luke asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. After Mohinder’s not-quite-warning, he’d expected a much worse reaction.

“Oh, come on, nearly everyone here is like six degrees of Sylar, and I thought you were the only one that wasn’t! Sylar and Peter have tried to kill each other like a dozen times, Sylar put five bullets in Matt once, nearly killed Eric, killed Molly’s parents and tried to kill her, he and Hiro tried to kill each other once. And he killed Mohinder’s father-.” Luke’s insides froze at that last statement. God, how could Mohinder have even stood to _look_ at him, let alone…? 

“Mohinder and Sylar tried to kill each other like ten times, and he killed _my_ dad-,” Elle cut herself off, and Luke heard a sniff in his ear that sounded suspiciously like a sob. “And I thought we had something together, me and him, you know? Sick, right? Killed my dad and I thought we’d end up like Bonnie and Clyde or something, running around, doing whatever we wanted. Then he tried to kill me… And picked up you. I don’t know why he didn’t try to kill _you_.”

She sounded jealous, and Luke hugged her probably harder than was comfortable, not sure what to say at first. This was the second time he’d heard a recitation of Sylar’s crimes, and now that he could put faces to all the specific acts of atrocity, it made him realize how fucking lucky he was not to have ended up much worse off than he had been.

And Elle had been _with_ Sylar. She knew what it was like, in a way that no one else ever could. So he told her the hardest truth he could, one he was still learning to believe himself.

“He didn’t care enough either way,” Luke said, feeling himself knot up inside. “I gave him everything he wanted and he just… threw me away when he was done.”

 _He didn’t care. He_ never _cared and you fucking know it Campbell,_ Luke told himself fiercely.

Elle pulled back from him and suddenly crushed her lips down on his. It sparked between them, literally, but Luke didn’t break away. Pain was an intrinsic part of his existence, and apparently hers as well. She was worth a little pain.

“Come on,” she said, pulling at his shirt, dragging him towards her room. “We don’t need him. Come on…”

\-----

Mohinder almost got up when Luke and Elle disappeared together, but Matt held him back.

“What are you going to do?” Matt asked him.

“She’s just… so damaged,” Mohinder whispered.

“And he isn’t? What are you going to tell him that he doesn’t already know? Tell him to back off because Elle didn’t have a good childhood?”

Mohinder shut his mouth on an answer. Matt was right. He had no firm objections, only a sort of latent jealously and a well-earned fear of what Elle could do. And despite that, she could be sweet, when she chose. He’d seen that when she’d saved him from Sylar.

He could only pray that the two of them wouldn’t eat each other alive. 

\----

Luke tried to keep from stumbling as Elle pulled him down the hall to her room, never stopping kissing while she did. He couldn’t believe this was happening, that Elle actually wanted him despite Sylar, even when she closed the door behind him and tackled him to the bed. 

He hesitated at first, but Elle was not slowing down. This was starting to go like some of Luke’s best daydreams. She certainly wasted no time trying to get him naked, accompanying every newly exposed patch of skin with a little jolt.

The shocks started to get more intense, more frequent, and finally, more painful as the clothing fell away. Elle was only giggling with each shock, but Luke was only flinching.

“You’ll get used to it, promise. You’ll like it,” she whispered in his ear. She accompanied that with another zap to his backside.

Luke’s first instinct was to ride out the pain in hopes of getting something better, just like when Sylar had-.

That thought brought Luke up short. He knew this didn’t have to hurt. He was willing to put up with pain, but he didn’t want to, not even for her. Not anymore. It didn’t have to be this way.

“Knock it off,” Luke said. Elle only giggled again and ran a sparking hand down the side of his face. Luke jerked back, pulling himself off of her entirely. “Quit it!” he snapped.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Elle complained.

“I don’t fucking like it, okay?” Luke said, reaching out to her again. She quirked an eyebrow and zapped the tips of his fingers. Luke snapped.

“ _Fine!_ What-the-fuck-ever, I’m going!” Luke snarled, reaching down to grab his clothing. He’d wanted her, but not like this. He didn’t want to have to fight against bad memories.

Elle grabbed his arm. “What’s your malfunction, seriously?” she said in irritation.

“Fucking excuse me if I don’t want to get zapped!” Luke said, eyes narrowed. “I spent two months getting the shit beaten out of me and you said you got cut and burned, so maybe I was fucking imagining things when I thought you wouldn’t want to get hurt making out!” 

“It’s not the same thing!” Elle protested, looking honestly surprised. “I thought you’d like it, I really did.”

Luke’s anger faded, and he curled up a bit on the bed so he wouldn’t feel so exposed.

“Sylar shocked me too,” he confessed, looking at the bedspread. “He had a power like yours. If I… didn’t move fast enough or something, sometimes he’d shock me.”

“Not ‘like’ mine,” Elle said, slowly edging closer. Luke didn’t flinch away when she curled up next to him, still fully clothed. “Mine. He has mine. He doesn’t have to kill to take powers, not anymore. He just does it because it likes it.” Luke could feel she was shaking.

“What’d he do, Elle?” Luke asked. Elle sniffed hard and looked up at him, sweeping her hair completely away from her face. She’d always kept it down, and now he could clearly see the burn scars running up one side of her neck. 

“Look,” she said, closing her eyes. “Go on and look.”

Luke’s hands were shaking hard as he moved them to the buttons on her shirt. Despite the fact Elle was hot (smoking hot, if anyone had asked Luke), she always wore long sleeves, long pants, and her shirts buttoned all the way up. As Luke slowly peeled the fabric away, he could see why. She had pink burn scars all over her body, crossing her stomach and chest, going down both hips and striping down her legs. Elle had tears running from her closed eyes as she helped Luke unhook her bra, showing the scars running over her breasts too. It was like someone had squirted her all over with lighter fluid before lighting a match- which was probably exactly what had happened, Luke realized after a second. 

He wrapped his arms around her and didn’t say anything, just hugged her hard and pressed his lips to the red slice on her forehead. 

“It doesn’t have to hurt,” Luke said, and could hear his voice cracking.

Elle leaned up to kiss him again, this time completely free of electricity. His breath shuddering in his chest, Luke remembered the last time someone had touched him with gentle kindness. Sliding his hand through Elle’s hair, he hoped he could show her what he’d learned.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Molly, can you find Nathan for me please?”

This had become a nightly ritual for Peter: finding his brother and seeing what he was doing. He’d done it every night since the plane crash. It was sort of masochistic when Peter thought about it, like worrying at a sore tooth. Even though Nathan had betrayed them all, he was still family, still the brother Peter had adored as a child. 

Molly knew the drill by now, and Peter fully expected her to land her push pin on D.C. and then tell him something like, “He’s in bed,” “He’s doing paperwork,” “He’s talking with Mr. Bennet,” or “He’s talking with Mr. Danko.”

Instead Molly’s brow furrowed in confusion as she rapidly flipped to the national map and began to drag her pin over it at a good clip, going westward from D.C. Peter’s heart leapt.

“He’s _flying_ ,” Molly said in awe. She’d seen West fly before, but Peter knew Nathan’s flight was much faster. And if he was flying _away_ from D.C…

“Micah, I need a clean phone!” Peter called. The phone was in his hand almost before he’d stopped talking. With shaking hands, Peter dialed Nathan’s number.

One ring. Two. _Click._

“Nathan, it’s Peter! Where are you?”

The rush of air in the background nearly drowned out Nathan’s words.

“Pete?”

“Where are you going? _What happened?”_ Peter demanded.

The air and static began to break up the connection. “Danko- found me out. Have- run. Claire- fr- pass -one. –oming for her.”

Claire, the only one who’d remained free, on Nathan’s belligerent orders. If Danko had discovered Nathan’s secret, everything was forfeit.

“Get Claire, and then get out of California. Call me back as soon as you have her, got it?” Peter said.

“-ot it. Love y-.”

The phone clicked off, and Peter got a pit in his stomach. God damn it. Nathan just couldn’t _say_ things like that… Shaking his head, Peter forced himself to think. If Nathan was no longer in power, who else was vulnerable?

“Molly, where’s my mom?” Peter asked urgently.

There was just a moment’s pause before she said, “New York.”

“I have to get her. She’s not safe,” Peter said, and tucked the phone in his pocket. Almost as an afterthought he asked, “Noah Bennet?”

“He’s in Tennessee already,” Molly reassured him.

 _Thank God,_ Peter thought to himself. Noah Bennet was a survivor. And he’d be damned useful… particularly if he knew the resistance had already saved his daughter.

“Micah, can you send him a message-?”

“Already done,” Micah said absently.

Peter smiled at the kids, and went to talk to West briefly.

“I have to borrow,” Peter said quickly. “My mom’s in danger. I have to get her out of New York tonight.”

“Good luck,” West said shortly, clasping Peter’s hand. Peter felt the lightness of flight settle into his body, and nodded. There was no offer of help from West, not that Peter would have taken it anyway. West didn’t like the idea of being locked up, but he also wasn’t about to put himself in harm’s way for a woman he didn’t know.

Stepping outside, Peter took a deep breath of the night air and launched himself into the sky.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

_Two days later…_

“They’re coming!” Molly announced, shouting loudly down the hall. The doors opened, and people began to pour from their rooms. Luke had been pretty surprised to wake up to find Peter gone, and even more surprised when the kids, Matt, and Mohinder had sat the resistance down to explain about Peter’s family. Luke had initially felt jealous that Peter had gone to rescue them, until he realized, even with hearing what he was sure was the sanitized version of the Petrelli family history, how fucked up they all were. This was a mercy mission, a family obligation, not some selfish, bleeding-heart rescue attempt. 

Besides, everything they’d gotten from Peter in the intervening days said they were using their “family time” to figure out something important. The most relevant to Luke was that Peter’s family was coming _here_ , today.

The members of the resistance gathered in the common room. It was two days since their leader had left them to rescue his mother, two days since senator Nathan Petrelli had been forced to flee. Messages from Peter said he’d been someplace called Coyote Sands along with his mother, his brother, his niece, and his niece’s adopted father. And now he was bringing them all to meet the rebels.

Nathan’s arrival at their headquarters was a cause for a full turnout. Everyone wanted to see the man responsible for making them into fugitives. Everyone wanted to see the hypocritical older brother of their leader. When Mohinder had told him about the weird little family triangle Peter had going, Luke was obscurely impressed. He’d had no idea Peter even had a brother, let alone that his brother was the asshole jerkwad who had been in charge of running them down like dogs.

They arrived in the area at sunset, and Peter smuggled the group inside under the cover of darkness. The four new people stood awkwardly just inside the doorway while Peter just seemed to blend back into the group like nothing had happened. There was a blonde girl maybe Luke’s age, a dark-haired older woman, a tall man with glasses, and Nathan. Elle quickly gave Luke the other names, Claire, Angela, and Noah, letting him put faces to the names Matt had told them about yesterday, but everyone’s attention was focused on the ex-senator.

It was dead silent for a very long time, and Luke watched Nathan seemed to struggle, mentally discarding one speech, after another. Peter sometimes looked like that, though it never took Peter long to stop hunting for words and just speak straight from the heart. Luke guessed Nathan wasn’t used to that. Nathan finally seemed to give up, turned and looked at Noah, who nodded.

“I screwed up,” Nathan said, and let out a huge sigh, hanging his head.

_“How’d you end up here? No one does unless everything’s fucked up.”_ Luke suddenly remembered Elle’s words to him when they’d first met, and thought a lot better of Nathan for saying something that simple.

“Do you think you can help us?” Peter asked quietly, looking at Angela and Noah too as it said it.

All three adults looked out into the crowd, unflinchingly accepting the hate-filled glares that stabbed back at them. Well, hate-filled from some of them. West had the bitchface down pat.

“Just let us know what we can do,” Nathan said, his politician’s voice brittle. 

“Whatever it takes to keep everyone safe,” Angela added, looking up at Peter. 

Peter looked out at everyone, his face gray with exhaustion. “You guys vote. I can’t make this decision on my own. Do they stay?”

“Well, if you didn’t bother to keep _me_ out, I suppose you can’t keep _them_ out,” Eric drawled suddenly. Claire glared at him with ice in her eyes, and the other rebels looked at him uneasily. Eric made everyone nervous; Elle had told Luke something about his background, and he was a creepy, creepy old man. The fact that he was usually so quiet made every time he spoke something of a surprise. 

_A creepy surprise,_ Luke added mentally.

Luke thought Eric liked making people uncomfortable, because now no one would admit that they were a smaller man than the Puppet Master. 

“Well, I always liked Pom-Pom, so she can stay,” Elle said loudly. Claire jerked in surprise when she saw Elle, and smiled tentatively. Elle waved back, and Claire took the two steps that separated the two groups.

“Angela, I know you can help us,” Matt said, and the two seemed to get locked in a staring contest. After a long moment of mental talking or whatever the heck Matt was doing, Angela nodded sharply.

“Of course I can. You can count on it.” She stepped towards Matt as Mohinder moved out of the crowd to confront Noah.

“You need me,” Noah said, way too fucking arrogantly for a middle-aged dude with glasses, in Luke’s opinion. But to his surprise, Mohinder didn’t hesitate, and waved Noah in. Eric waved at him with a smile, and Noah gave him a glare that should have struck him dead on the spot, if he’d had eye beams or something. Luke seriously hoped he didn’t…

Only Nathan was left, and the room got ominously quiet. No one was speaking up for him.

“Do you think you can do some heavy lifting?” Peter said into the strained silence.

Nathan nodded tersely, and bowed his shoulders. “I can do that. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

Moving stiffly, Peter put a hand on Nathan’s shoulder and pulled him into the group.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peter sat on the bed in his room, holding his head in his hands while he tried to stop his head from throbbing. It had been a rough few days, not just in rescuing his family, and trying to forgive his brother, but also in confronting the evidence of the past. It had been heartbreaking to realize exactly what had happened the last time the government had discovered specials, and Peter couldn’t get the images of small, child-sized skulls riddled with bullet holes, buried with their baseball gloves and baby dolls.

They were up against so much worse now, not just a small camp full of people, but a whole country on the verge of ripping itself apart. If Peter had known this earlier, had known _anything_ earlier-.

The door opened and closed, and Angela sat on the bed next to him, hugging him like she had when he was a small boy. There was still dust in her hair and on her clothes, something Peter knew meant things had changed, and changed almost out of recognition for both of them. The mother he’d known would never let herself look less than her best.

“Did you dream about anything here?” Peter whispered, not lifting his head.

“Peter…” Angela started.

“ _Did_ you, Mom?” he demanded. “You saw what was going to happen at Coyote Sands before it happened. That why you survived and no one else did. What about here? What about now?”

“Peter,” Angela repeated, running her hand over his head like she had when he was a kid. “I’m so sorry-.”

“You _lied_ to me, Mom,” Peter hissed, jerking away. “All my life. About what was happening to me, to Nathan. Our powers, our _destiny!_ And we never knew, we just had to try to do the right thing, and people _died_. People died, Mom, and we could have stopped it.”

“I’ve tried to do whatever I could to protect this family,” Angela said, reaching for Peter’s hand. He let her take it, too tired to pull away. 

“You know something,” Peter accused. “You do. And-.” He stopped himself, took a deep breath, and plunged on, “Tell me, Mom. Tell me, or don’t tell me, just don’t give out little hints whenever you think I need them. I’m not going to have Matt read your mind. I’m not going to borrow your power and try to see for myself. I just want you to be straight with me for once. Please.”

His voice came out soft and pleading, but his grip in Angela’s hand was iron. Smiling sadly, Angela leaned over and whispered in Peter’s ear. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Angela left Peter thinking in his room about what she’d told him. She’d never wanted Peter to be burdened with her power, but that hadn’t been her choice to make. Seeing into the future was an uncomfortable gift, no matter what form it took. Peter would have to decide what he wanted to do with her dream on his own.

Instead she went to look over her fellow rebels. Peter had probably thought she’d consider this quite a step down from the power she was used to. And yes, after nearly fifty years of privilege and unprecedented control, it was entirely disconcerting to have to be on the run for her life. Particularly when her fellows consisted of children, juvenile delinquents, criminals, idealists, confused “ordinary” people, and the others that had fallen from grace.

Arthur, Angela was certain, would have found this virtually repugnant. To Angela, it reminded her of the first days of the Company, back when a handful of teenagers and their immortal mentor had united to save the world. Angela hid a proud smile behind a cup of coffee. Whatever was to come, foreseen or not, Peter had proven himself to be a better man than any mother could have hoped.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peter stepped out of his room sometime well after midnight, too tired to sleep, his mind not wanting to quiet down after hearing what his mother had told him. The rest of the bunker was quiet, and when he drifted into the common room, the only person there was Nathan. He had apparently taken over the night watch for Matt and Mohinder, leaving the two of them alone.

Nathan looked over at him as Peter sat down, wrapping himself in a blanket to try to keep the chill at bay. They’d barely begun to forgive each other for everything that had happened, but Peter just couldn’t hold onto his anger at this time of night. 

“What were you and Ma talking about?” Nathan asked quietly.

“How did you decide what you were going to do, Nathan? When you knew people might die?” Peter asked.

Nathan flipped through the pictures from the security cameras on screen for almost half a minute before answering. “I used to be in the military, Pete. And they trained us to know when to cut our losses, how to save the most lives, sometimes by letting other people die. Dad was like that-.”

“You’re not Dad,” Peter said sharply.

“I still wanted to make him proud, even after what he did to you,” Nathan whispered, and closed his eyes for a moment. “I thought I could do something to make sure other people wouldn’t get hurt by us. All of us, Pete. We’re dangerous.”

“I know,” Peter said miserably. “But not everyone. Molly? Monica? We can’t sweep everyone into some ‘dangerous’ box and stick them in a hole.”

“That’s why I’m here now. Because you know how to look at all the different people. All I was seeing was a mob,” Nathan said. He sounded sad, worse than he had at Coyote Sands, and Peter reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. “You see the better side of people, Peter. You always did.”

“You can learn,” Peter promised. “But they’re not going to see _you_ for a while either.”

“I’ll deal with it,” Nathan said, and straightened a little out of his slump, wincing a bit when his back touched the cold metal of the chair.

“Did Danko really push you out a window?” Peter asked, concerned.

“Yeah,” Nathan said, and suddenly smiled slightly. “I wish you could have seen his face when I flew.”

Peter chuckled and felt himself starting to warm up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

_The next day…_

“Matt, I hate to ask you, but we are seriously out of options,” Peter said softly. Matt looked over at Mohinder, and then over Peter’s shoulder at Micah and Molly. He finally glanced over at Bennet and Nathan. He hated being cornered like this, particularly first thing in the morning, doubly so when he damn well _knew_ what Peter was asking for.

“Don’t they know anything?” Matt whispered. “They went on the run only a couple of days ago. Tell me they gave us _something_ we don’t know.” Matt didn’t need his telepathy to know what was going through Peter’s mind. With the false raid and the fact that the hunters had switched to live rounds meant that things were deteriorating fast. Unless the rebels wanted to get lethal, they had to do something to end this fight _soon_ , or there was going to be a steadily rising body count. On both sides.

“Danko hasn’t raised the alarm about Nathan having an ability because that could put the whole operation under suspicion. And he has exactly zero people skills, according to Noah, so he has to have lawyers argue his case without having any real understanding of what they’re arguing _for_. We’ve hidden and rescued so many people that it’s getting harder and harder for Homeland Security to justify keeping Danko funded. 

“They have almost a hundred people we haven’t been able to account for, and they alone are enough to convince the right people to keep the hunt going. But if they no longer have those people, that proof, then the bottom drops out of Danko’s funding. Then he’s just a single guy with a gun, not the head of his own private army,” Peter explained nervously. He had plenty of right to be nervous; there was a serious amount of “if” coming off this tentative plan.

“So we have to find these people?” Matt hazarded.

“I _think_ we do, but I don’t know where to look. Danko’s group is getting smarter. Whoever these people were, they took their names completely off the computer once they started moving them. Micah can’t get any names-.”

“Which means Molly can’t find them. Damn,” Matt muttered. 

“Is there anything else we’re supposed to be doing?” Peter asked, his eyes almost begging. Peter wasn’t as bullheadedly proud as Nathan, but he had tried his best to be as self-reliant as possible. He had seen how trying to invoke visions of the future wore at Matt’s psyche, knew how hard it was to interpret the paintings properly, and hadn’t asked him except in direst need. 

Matt knew the need was pretty damn dire at the moment. Though he hadn’t been trying to look in Peter’s mind, or anyone else’s, he’d been getting enough of a cross-section about Coyote Sands to make his blood run cold. Behind Peter’s nervousness was an iron determination that matched anything he’d ever felt from the formidable Noah Bennet or the even more formidable Angela Petrelli. Peter would do anything to prevent a repetition of the Coyote Sands massacre. And Matt would too.

Though he hadn’t tried to go looking for a future vision for weeks, something had been steadily tickling at the back of his mind, a sense of being at the edge of a cliff, or having a heavy stone balanced on its edge. All it would take would be a single nudge to go one way or the other. 

Before he’d even consciously decided, Matt felt himself go blind, eyes and mind leaping into the ether of the future.

\-----

When he broke from the trance, Mohinder and Molly were at his sides, carefully pulling away several drawings from his now-cramping fingers.

“Matt?” Mohinder asked tentatively.

“I’m back,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I think… What… did I draw?”

Matt was suddenly conscious that everyone in the room was crowded around them, and he ducked his head, wanting to shrink into himself. He didn’t like that he’d had this “gift” thrust upon him, and if he’d had a way of getting a hold of Usutu, he would have begged to have it taken away. But he was stuck with it, like it or not, and Peter knew sometimes you needed as many minds as possible to look for the meanings in these drawings. Secrecy had nearly killed them all more than once; they’d dispensed with as much as possible.

Mohinder had the first of four drawings in his hand. Matt took a look before passing it around the circle; it showed several ugly stone buildings on a rocky shore, the picture framed by some kind of window. It definitely looked vaguely familiar, but he just couldn’t place it.

“I swear I’ve seen this before…” Claire muttered as she passed it along.

“Yeah, like maybe on TV or something,” West said, furrowing his brow.

“It’s Alcatraz,” Alex said positively, the second it got into his hand. Both the other Californians almost slapped themselves in the forehead in simultaneous “duh” moments. “I went there with my parents last summer. It’s how it looked when we took the ferry out there.”

Matt looked down at the next picture, color starting to drain from his face. Mohinder, Monica, and some of the others were hauling people out of stark jail cells as chunks of stone rained down from the ceiling. A shadowy figure stood in the background, hands raised to the destruction around him, red lightning striking him. When that picture was passed to Ando, he started to look extremely grim.

The third showed the buildings of Alcatraz in utter ruin, pulled down brick by brick into an unrecognizable heap. Fire burned in places, and a silhouetted boat seemed to be fleeing from the wreckage. The fourth showed a crowd of people surrounding a limousine with American flags fluttering from the back. Matt thought he recognized himself and possibly some of the other rebels in the crowd, all of them smiling at the open door of the limo.

“Please tell me that’s not the presidential limo,” West said, gingerly holding the fourth picture.

“I could, but that would be a lie,” Nathan said positively. “Granted, it could be the governor’s, or a senator’s, but somehow I doubt it.”

“At least we look happy,” Molly pointed out optimistically. “That’s a good sign, right?”

Matt didn’t have the heart to tell her it could be for a more sinister reason. He’d seen a few mobs as a cop, and he knew sometimes people in a violent crowd could be grinning their heads off at things they’d be horrified at later. 

“I hope so,” Matt said quietly. He also didn’t want to mention that he wasn’t exactly certain all the rebels were in the crowd. However Isaac Mendez’s gift had been put into his hands, it hadn’t given him overwhelming artistic skill. Trying to identify tiny faces in a small drawing could be difficult, at best. He couldn’t tell who might be missing.

“So they’re keeping the prisoners in Alcatraz. That’s smart,” Noah Bennet said. “Very difficult to get everyone out of there, even for people with abilities.”

“Ok, if we’re supposed to pull down Alcatraz, how the hell do we do it?” Elle asked.

“Whoa, whoa!” Nathan broke in, and received several glares of monumental proportions. “Look, I know none of you like me, but you’re talking about destroying a famous national landmark. That won’t look good-.”

“It’s a _prison_ , not the Statue of Liberty,” Peter broke in quickly. “We’re destroying a cage, a very old prison that’s being used to hold American citizens against their will. This is symbolic, Nathan. We have to show people _something_ they’ll remember! I think these drawings are saying we need a symbolic victory, along with rescuing people.”

Nathan set his jaw, but finally bowed his head in acquiescence. 

“So, back to the wrecking crew question?” Elle asked.

Eyes slid to Mohinder, and he merely glanced down at the drawings before shaking his head.

“It would take me _days_ , if not _weeks_ of effort to take down buildings that size. Even Peter and I working together would take quite some time,” Mohinder said sadly. His eyes flicked over to Ando. “Even with your help, it would take a while.”

“We need more people,” Peter said fiercely. “We can’t do this with who we have here. Noah, you said there were a hundred people probably there, right?” 

“Who else is going to join a last stand? Sorry to say, I think you already have your entire suicide club,” West said pointedly.

“Then we need a one-man army!” Peter sighed, “I’d give my right arm to have my powers working like they used to. I’m not sure how we’re supposed to get to an island, avoid all the guards, get out a hundred people, and level the place with who we have.”

“Someone can do that.” The words were out of Luke’s mouth before he could stop himself, and he felt the entire room staring at him. Peter was clearly hoping for a miracle. Luke only knew one person who could do something like that. Hoping he wasn’t about to get lynched, Luke plunged on, heedless. “Sylar can.”

The room erupted in pandemonium.

“You have got to be kidding me!”

“He’s a killer, we can’t trust him!”

“He’s insane, he’d never do this, even if we _could_ trust him, which we can’t!”

After the initial wave of screaming and yelling were over, tempers had still barely cooled.

“We’d be asking a wolf to defend a herd of goats against wild dogs,” Bennet was saying, glaring at him. It took Luke a second to process that complicated animal analogy, but once he did, he admitted it was pretty accurate.

He didn’t like being a goat though. 

“Why would he be willing to defend us instead of killing us for our powers?” West asked. Of everyone here, West had never had the pleasure of meeting Sylar face-to-face, or being close friends of anyone who had. He, at least, was being semi-calm about the whole thing; he could think about in the abstract.

“He didn’t take mine. He could have, lots of times, but he didn’t,” Luke pointed out.

“I would expect him to throw in with the government before us. He’s not exactly self-sacrificing,” Matt muttered.

Elle mumbled a faint protest, and Mohinder looked like he was trying to keep his mouth shut.

“If we’re going to die either way, then what do we have to lose by trying?” Luke demanded. 

“He will help, if you appeal to him in the right way.” Angela Petrelli’s voice cut through all the others, and brought the argument to a screeching halt. “He may need help, but he is the only one who can accomplish this.”

Luke stared at her, stunned that he had an ally in his ill-conceived non-plan, and that of everyone, it was the leader’s mom.

Peter looked like he wanted to spit nails, but bowed his head.

“I think we have to,” he said.

The room went completely silent, except for a weird croaking noise that sounded like Matt was trying to keep himself from saying something he was going to regret.

“Peter, why?” Claire asked, sounding shocked and betrayed.

Peter looked up, eyes bleak and damp.

“Less than a week ago, Danko’s hunters pumped an explosive rocket into a building they thought held two twelve year-old kids without any kind of warning,” he said flatly. “A week before that, they used live rounds on a raid, and shot Luke. Danko doesn’t have anyone holding him back anymore, now that Nathan and Noah are gone. He could kill those people in Alcatraz, or worse. We’re out of time.” Peter had to pause, and Luke could see him clenching one hand into a fist, nails biting into his palms for control.

“We’re out of time. Sylar is the only person any of us know who can help us make a stand. If we can’t do this now, than I don’t think we’re going to be able to do anything but run.”

There was another long moment of deathly silence, and heads started to nod, jerky and reluctant. It was unanimous; Sylar, or probable gruesome death. Same thing, in Luke’s mind.

He went to the bathroom later and puked his guts out. From the sounds in the stalls next to him, he wasn’t the only one.


	4. Chapter 4

Peter hadn’t wanted to ask, but Molly located Sylar before Peter could broach the question, though she looked pasty white and sick from “seeing” him again. Micah, as Rebel, sent him the invitation. After that, it was just a matter of seeing if he decided to take their offer. Peter waited with Monica and the kids, feeling like a ghoul for having them make the initial contact. But what else could they do? Mohinder had told him Luke didn’t know where Sylar might go after visiting his father, and no one wanted to go looking for him.

“I got a text message back,” Micah said suddenly, and Peter looked up. “He’ll meet us. He wants a location.”

“Here,” Peter said loudly. “We’ll meet him here.”

“Peter…” Angela started.

“We don’t have a back-up location,” Noah broke in. “Anywhere else we meet could be targeted by Danko unless we had plenty of time to check it out beforehand. We don’t have that kind of time.”

Peter looked out at the rest of the rebels, and could see his own exhaustion written, to a greater or lesser extent, on every face. Meeting Sylar could be deadly dangerous, but everyone’s store of awed terror was starting to run thin. There was only so long you could go around in a fearful daze.

“Micah, do it.”

\-----

They had to wait two days for Sylar to arrive, and Molly kept them up-to-date on his location at all times. He was definitely coming their way, but no one knew if it was to kill them or to help them. By the second day, Micah had gotten another text message that Sylar wanted to meet Rebel. Peter immediately vetoed Micah going alone. He didn’t want anyone alone with Sylar, something that Luke had very mixed feelings about.

Elle hadn’t said a word about Sylar, and neither had Luke, but he knew they were both thinking about what they’d say to him when he got to the bunker. Luke wasn’t exactly sure if he’d be able to say anything at all, and didn’t know how he was going to act. It had only been a little over a month since Sylar had left him, and things had changed so much since then…

“We’ll meet him all together or not at all. I’m not taking any chances with Sylar. We can say Rebel is me if we have to.”

“He’ll know,” Luke said. “He knows when someone is lying.”

“Ok, why the hell didn’t someone say so before?” Peter asked, glaring at Bennet.

“He must have gotten it after…” Bennet trailed off and flicked his eyes to Elle.

“Me,” Elle finished.

“He had it when I met him,” Luke said flatly.

Peter took one deep breath to calm himself a little. “Ok, ok, then everyone just be careful about what you say.”

“He’s coming here now! Five minutes,” Molly warned. 

His stomach in knots, Luke went outside with the others, shivering in the cold and snow as they hiked to the place where they hid the cars.

Sylar showed up in the same dusty, silver-gray truck, wearing a new black trench coat and looking more dangerous than ever. People were flinching in the crowd when he swept his eyes over them appraisingly. The ones who hadn’t met Sylar before were tense and wary. Sylar looked idly amused, like a tiger debating what fat, crippled rabbit to eat next, right up until he caught sight of Luke and Elle. He suddenly had an expression of total shock on his face, complete and utter disbelief, and Peter used that to his advantage.

Stepping forward, he spread his hands in a nominal non-threatening gesture. Luke knew it couldn’t be _that_ non-threatening; he’d seen Peter talking to Eric right before they’d gone out. “You wanted to meet Rebel? He’s here. We have a challenge for you, like the message said.”

Luke mentally congratulated Micah on that. A plea for help Sylar would have probably rejected out of hand. But a challenge was sure to peak his interest. Sylar liked being the best at whatever he did.

But Luke expected Sylar would have come back with a snappy retort to Peter’s request, if he weren’t still shell-shocked. The very idea of challenging Sylar directly was laughable.

“Challenge,” Sylar repeated at length, as if he wasn’t certain he’d heard that right.

“Yeah. Everything’s starting to implode; you know it. We have to stop this now, and we’re going to get overwhelmed unless we all fight together. If the hunters throw enough people at you, eventually even you’ll go down.”

“And you want my… help,” Sylar stated.

“We need your help,” Angela corrected. Sylar glared at her with enough force to make Luke flinch. “I’ve seen it. It’s been painted.”

“Where the hell did you get one of Isaac’s paintings?” Sylar demanded. “I know _I_ never painted anything with any of _you_ , so unless Peter went through a blue phase before Arthur drained him dry or Isaac sold a few extra pieces before I-.”

“Shut. Up,” Peter said tightly, hands clenching into fists.

“I painted it.” Matt stepped forward, holding the drawings in question. Mohinder was right at his side, a dark-edged shadow prepared to spring to Matt’s defense if necessary. 

“What?” Sylar looked like Matt had just spoken to him a foreign language, he was so blindsided.

“I. Painted. It.”

“But-. _How?_ ” Sylar demanded. 

Matt smiled, a small, twisted, bitter smile that held nothing of mirth in it. “Destiny, Sylar.”

Peter let Sylar hang for another moment before getting back down to business. 

“If we can stop this, it has to be now.”

“And you want my help doing what?”

“Taking down Alcatraz. There are prisoners there; all we have to do is free them, and we can force the government to come to terms, to show them all we ever wanted was to be left alone-.”

Sylar seemed to have gotten his aplomb back during Peter’s offer, because he did exactly what Luke expected him to do.

He laughed. Sylar threw his head back and laughed at them all.

Next to him, Elle started sparking, and Luke could see everyone tensing, preparing to fight.

“What’s this?” Sylar asked, voice rich with amusement. “Either I’m with you, or I’m dead meat?”

 _Hold._ Matt’s thought rang through everyone’s head, and Luke found himself swaying in place, hands glowing with power. God, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to fry Sylar’s head or…

“You don’t really give us much of a choice,” Peter said tightly. “You’re a killer-.”

“Spare me your rhetoric, Petrelli. Your brother does it better,” Sylar said dismissively.

“Maybe, but he doesn’t need my help,” Nathan spoke up from the back of the crowd. 

Sylar snapped his gaze to Nathan, and his eyes widened with genuine surprise. “You got yourself caught.”

Nathan nodded, looking grim.

“Then we _are_ in trouble,” Sylar said, sobering.

“So?” Peter prompted, not dropping his ready stance.

“Why me? And none of your usual impassioned B.S.” Sylar glanced over at Matt. “And if you mention destiny again, I _will_ cut your head open.”

Glancing to the side, Luke could see Claire bare her teeth at Sylar. Next to her, Bennet was sliding a gun out of his holster.

Peter gritted his teeth together at Sylar’s arrogant tone, took a deep breath, and spoke. “We have to end this now, as decisively as we can. There aren’t enough people willing to risk it all to save us, because they don’t understand how bad this is going to get. Everyone here knows what’s at stake, especially _you_. We need a one-man army to pull this off; that’s you Sylar. If you don’t help us, they’re eventually going to capture and kill us all, and that means no more new powers for you, ever.”

Sylar considered that statement at length, eyes closed, raising a finger to silence Peter when he would have spoken.

“I’ll do it,” Sylar said finally. Peter seemed not to hear him at first. And then he did, but didn’t look like he believed it. Sylar just smiled at him until Matt nodded.

 _He’s telling the truth,_ Matt whispered mentally, and everyone relaxed marginally.

Very marginally.

“Ok. Come on,” Peter said finally, and led him towards the bunker.

“I don’t know if I want to fry him or fuck him stupid,” Elle murmured in Luke’s ear.

“I hear you,” Luke replied fervently. Even knowing what he did about Sylar, about what he’d done to everyone here, and knowing exact how Sylar had treated him _and_ Elle, Luke couldn’t stop himself from staring at him. From remembering how, at least for a while, Sylar had been the one that had made Luke feel powerful for the first time in his life. It wasn’t something he could forget easily.

“Maybe both,” Elle added speculatively.

“Yeah.”

“I think we’re warped.”

“No shit.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“There you are.”

Luke froze, cold from more than the frigid Montana weather. He’d gone out alone to think, and the last thing he wanted was to confront Sylar. Apparently he wasn’t going to get that lucky. He’d thought Sylar had been sufficiently distracted with whatever elaborate planning Peter and the others had going, and didn’t think he could handle being in the bunker when Sylar was being so ostentatiously… _Sylar_. Elle had said she’d try to cover for him; her having a little more anger to shield herself. Luke needed the space before he did something stupid.

“It took me forever to find you,” Sylar continued, and Luke turned around to look at him.

Luke felt his insides flip-flopping, from anger to fear to a sick longing. Going with Sylar had been his first taste of freedom, even if had involved him getting smacked around, yelled at, abused, and abandoned. Even now, even with all the kindness he’d been shown, his friendship with the rebels, his relationship with Elle, sometimes all he wanted to do some days was be back on the road with Sylar. Most of the rest of the time his brain was in gear and forcibly reminded him that Sylar had considered him a combination of punching bag and sex toy.

Remembering Mohinder’s care, Peter’s concern, and sharing what he had with Elle, and then comparing that to what he’d gotten from Sylar, let him get angry enough to say what he wanted to.

“Why’d you care? You left me,” Luke said, glaring. “Twice.” 

Sylar stepped forward, almost gliding through the snow, until he was looming over Luke. Luke knew he should back up, or run away, but he felt like his legs were stuck to the ground. He froze in place while Sylar reached out to twine his fingers through Luke’s hair.

“You pissed me off. Besides, I didn’t need you tagging along when I went to see my dad.” Sylar’s caress was almost gentle, like petting, a possessive gesture he’d used on the road.

“You kill him?” Luke asked, trembling. His hands were warming up, but he just couldn’t move them to burn Sylar off of him. God, he didn’t want him to touch him, he _didn’t!_

“Didn’t need to; he’s dying of cancer. I decided to let the old bastard die a slow and painful death.”

Luke didn’t have anything to say to that, and Sylar seemed confused.

“Well?” he prompted. 

Luke blinked and stared at Sylar like he’d never seen him before. Sylar wanted Luke’s opinion. He honestly wanted it. He wanted someone to tell him how great his decisions were.

Asshole.

“So, it took you a month to figure out what to do?” Luke asked sarcastically.

Sylar scowled and his fingers twitched. Luke braced himself to be thrown, but it never came. “Watch your mouth. I was trying to find _them_.” Sylar jerked his head back in the direction of the bunker. “The ‘rebels.’” His caress through Luke’s hair had finally stopped, tightening painfully. Luke felt his breathing get faster; a few months ago, this would have been a prelude to shoving him on his knees.

“Why? You didn’t even want me around. Why did you want to find them?” Luke asked, trying to distract him. If it had just been for power-collection purposes, Sylar probably just would have said so.

“My dad had one good piece of advice, that there’s no point in going after small game. I’m going to step it up,” Sylar said proudly. His hand tightened on Luke’s hair, and he felt tears prick in his eyes at the pain.

“Kill the rebels?” Luke asked, trying to hide a growing panic. Why was Sylar out here alone? Had he already killed them all while Luke was out here?

“None of them offer any real challenge. I’ve beaten all of them before,” Sylar said breezily. Luke viciously wondered if Sylar’s lie-detecting power worked on his own bullshit. He’d believe Mohinder and Elle’s accounts of Sylar’s previous defeats before Sylar’s arrogant account of his omnipotent awesomeness. Hell, _Luke_ had seen Sylar nearly get taken down by agents before. If Luke hadn’t helped him escape the first time, Sylar would have been the one unconscious or dead in the back of the truck, not Luke.

“No, I’m going after the hunters,” Sylar continued.

Luke stared at the new fanaticism in Sylar’s face. Sylar had been so annoyed at the agents before, and had been so careful in avoiding them, and Luke hadn’t thought he’d want to make himself an even bigger target by starting a one-man campaign against the government. 

“Just like that?” Luke asked, incredulous.

The stare Sylar pierced him with should have left him dead. How quickly he’d forgotten how Sylar didn’t like his word questioned. Not that Luke had done it very much before, but now the stakes were higher. More people than Luke would pay the price if he managed to provoke the serial killer into a rage. 

“Not ‘just like that,’ Luke. It’s my goal. A challenge, as Peter put it. I want to see if the government _really_ has what it takes to put me down. I don’t think they do. And I’m going to prove it.”

Luke felt a bolt of pure fear as Sylar pulled him into a hard, bruising kiss. He brought his hands up to shove at Sylar’s shoulders, wanting to burn him, but instead found his hands just clutching at Sylar’s jacket. The hand in his hair, the pain and force on his mouth, all threw him back to their time on the road, and Luke wasn’t sure how to break free. He’d used to want this, he would have begged on bleeding knees for Sylar just to kiss him and acknowledge he was _there_.

“You _fucker!_ ”

That ringing cry was accompanied by a blast of blue lightning that literally blew Luke and Sylar apart. Luke flopped backwards in the snow until Elle grabbed him by the arm and hauled him up. He was torn between relief and anger, and finally settled on relief, at least until he saw Elle and Sylar’s faces. They both looked nearly ready to kill.

“Who’s the fucker?” Luke whispered urgently. “Him or me?”

“Yes,” Elle said shortly. “But I’m not going to kill you because you won’t grow back.”

“Thanks?” Luke said, straightening up at Elle’s side. She tended to have lots of violence in her banter, but he was pretty sure she wasn’t exactly in a bantering mood right now.

“If you wanted to join in, you just could have said so. I’m sure Luke wouldn’t have minded.” Sylar was rapidly going from angry to amused, and Luke could feel his hands heating up in reaction. He wasn’t some kind of goddamned party favor!

“No,” Elle said, her voice deadly. “You don’t get to fucking come back here and just pick up where you left off. We’re done. I’m ‘stick a fork in me, I’m done,’ done.”

“I’d expected better from you, Elle. I remember you being the one that was _so insistent_ that we were special, that we didn’t need to play by the rules. And now you’re Peter Petrelli’s personal battery?” Sylar shook his head. “You shouldn’t lower your standards.”

“Fuck. You. At least I know Peter won’t go psycho on me.”

“Takes one to know one, I suppose,” Sylar said, smiling tightly.

“Yeah. Exactly.” Elle actually bared her teeth at Sylar, and Luke had to swallow hard to try to get himself back under control. He hadn’t thought seeing Sylar again would be like this. He thought he’d either knuckle under, like he always had, or grow a spine and defy him. Somehow managing to do both, and then see Elle lash out… Luke didn’t know what to think anymore.

“Peter’s going to get you both killed, and you know it,” Sylar said, narrowing his eyes. “His plan isn’t going to work. I was hoping you two, at least, would see it. You’re better off with me. You always were.”

“What the hell?” Luke managed, voice cracking with fear and disbelief. “Fucking leave me behind, leave Elle practically dead, and we’re _better off_ with you?”

“What’s your goal, Luke?” Sylar asked, his voice going soft and persuasive. Almost introspective, reminding Luke of those few times on the road when Sylar would almost be vulnerable, reachable. 

“I want to-,” Luke cut himself off, and took a deep breath. “I want to live.”

“You know you’re safer with me, then. Peter already got you shot.”

Elle gripped Luke’s arm hard, and Luke could feel his muscles seizing as she accidentally let current loose. Weirdly, the pain helped get his brain in gear. Or maybe it was the extra electricity.

“At least he’s doing something about it. What the hell were we gonna do, Sylar? Just drive around the country until the hunters forgot about us?” Luke asked.

Sylar actually flinched at that. 

“Peter’s _got_ a goal; he’s gonna try to make all this crap stop. Come on, man, that’s a fucking _goal_.” Luke watched Sylar slowly straighten up, looking at them both like he’d never seen them before.

“If I end up dying trying to meet Peter’s ‘challenge,’ I’ll just get up after a few minutes and walk away. You two won’t. Peter’s as ruthless as his brother; all the Petrellis are ruthless, they just show it differently. Yes, Peter has a goal. And he won’t stop until he sees it through. You understand?” Sylar asked, eyes hard and voice soft.

Luke blinked. It almost sounded like Sylar had managed to work some actual _concern_ for him and Elle into his diatribe.

“What other party are we going to get an invite to, Gabriel?” Elle asked, her voice poisonously sweet. “At least this way we actually get to do something, instead of just being dragged around as your toys.”

 _“Fine,”_ Sylar snarled. “Have it your way. You’ll need me to carry you through this anyway.”

The menace in Sylar’s voice left Luke shivering as Sylar turned and walked back to the bunker. Peter was right, and so was Sylar; they were going to be lucky to get out of this alive. This was a suicide club.

“We don’t need him,” Luke said, half to himself, more trying to convince himself than anything else. “We don’t.”

Elle gripped his arm even more tightly in silent agreement.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

_Two days later, San Francisco_

“It’s here,” Hiro said, his voice muffled through the fog. “Yes, careful. Don’t fall in.”

Peter squinted through the fog, and managed to see the ramp up to the old ferry before he tripped over it. Gesturing carefully, he got the others on the boat first, counting heads to make sure everyone was there. Well, everyone but his mother and Noah.

\--  
 _“This is a symbolic act you’re doing, Peter, and we have to be certain it’s interpreted correctly. That’s something Noah and I can do while you’re rescuing these people,” Angela said._

_Noah Bennet didn’t exactly look pleased at the thought of being separated from Claire during the destruction of Alcatraz, but Peter thought the very intense conversation she’d had between her father and Nathan had convinced him to let her. Peter certainly hadn’t been willing to step onto that ant’s nest. However that miracle had occurred, it freed Noah up to protect Angela on her mission._

_“Between the two of us, there are enough favors owed to the Company to get a few minutes with the right people. If we don’t handle this correctly from the political end-.”_

_“I know,” Peter said, biting his lip. His mother and Noah might have done some terrible things during their lives, but Peter knew it had all been, in a strange way, to try to protect everyone. And they’d done it with extensive lying and manipulation. If anyone could help them spin the wholesale destruction of a historical landmark as a good thing, Noah Bennet and Angela Petrelli could._

_“Be careful.” That was the only thing Nathan had said to her before she’d gone, hugging her as hard as Peter had before her and Noah had left to go to Washington._

_When they’d left, Peter had said to Nathan, “You know they’re not going to be careful, right?”_

_Nathan nodded silently. He’d been much quieter in these past few days, knowing that his politician’s voice was anything but welcome here. And knowing he needed to earn his forgiveness by his actions, not his words._

_“You know, Ma would make a better Senator that me.”_

_Peter had laughed at that. It was the first time he’d cracked a smile in a week._  
\--

The boat rumbled to life under Monica’s hands. Though her muscle mimicry power didn’t let her intimately learn the skills of a sailor, Micah had had her studying the instruments for a week. It wasn’t like anyone could see where they were going anyway; she was working solely off the high-tech heads-up display Micah had gotten for her

\--  
 _“Ok, so how do we get to Alcatraz? It’s kind of a long swim,” Claire asked._

_“Like Alex said, a ferry,” Hiro said, pointing to the docks._

_“Yeah, but they shut down tourism to the island. Most of the ferries are decommissioned, and the others are owned by the government,” Noah pointed out._

_“Yes, but Yamagoto Industries purchased one for its company retreat yesterday,” Hiro said proudly._

_Ando grinned in pride as everyone stared at Hiro in amazement._  
\--

“How close are we?” Peter whispered, unwilling to talk too loudly in the nighttime fog.

“Twenty minutes,” Monica said confidently.

“Where’s Alex?”

“He’s right where he should be,” Molly said positively. 

“Sending the signal… now!” Micah cried.

\--  
 _“Great, awesome, so we have a fricking boat. How the hell are we going to get these hundred or so people off the island and onto the boat when the place is swarming with hunters?” West asked. “I sure as hell can’t fly them out one at a time, even if I wanted to make myself a target every time I got near the island.”_

_“The hunters won’t be a problem,” Sylar rumbled in amusement._

_Peter closed his eyes and counted to five. “We don’t want to kill anyone,” he said, biting off each word. “That won’t help anything.”_

_“Then I suppose they will be a problem,” Sylar amended smoothly. He did not, Peter noted, add any alternative suggestions._

_“Do they have the people drugged?” Elle asked._

_“They seem to like that. Low maintenance storage,” Eric added meditatively._

_“Good point…” Peter said. “Micah, how’re you coming with the plans?”_

_Micah ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “I’m trying! But the database is_ huge _and I’m running out of places to look!”_

_“They must be hiding it under something innocuous,” Noah said. “That’s what Primatech did.”_

_“Hey, Alcatraz is actually run by the National Parks service,” Alex piped up. “Is there something under that?”_

_“Wait… Look into the National Parks' west coast financials,” Noah said, getting up. He looked like a lightbulb had just gone off in his head. Micah shrugged and worked his magic, bringing up lists of folders and financial records. Noah scrolled down the list, and smiled tightly in triumph._

_“What do you think the National Parks needs with several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise from a major pharmaceutical company? Purchased last month?”_

_“Bingo,” Claire said. “So the people are drugged… what does that mean?”_

_“Fewer hunters. You don’t need so many guards when your inmates are comatose,” Noah said._

_“So very true,” Sylar said, his voice perfectly even. Peter saw Noah’s back stiffen at his tone, but he didn’t flinch._

_“Wow! Oh wow, they bought_ millions _of bucks of stuff from ZFT!” Micah said suddenly. “_ Look _at this stuff! I mean, they have ten fifty-five-fours, twelve seven-sixty-two-Z-five-hundreds-.”_

_“Hey buddy, I can appreciate the full-on geek-out, but I didn’t memorize their catalog numbers,” Alex broke in._

_“And what the heck is-?”_

_“Robotics company,” Alex broke in, before the question could be finished._

_“Robotics, AI, all kinds of new circuit… boards…” Micah trailed off as he seemed to realize something. “Uh guys, those model numbers are for robotic sentries. Fully automatic robotic sentries.”_

_“A secondary defense system in case of an incident,” Noah said, nodding in understanding._

_“So, if we can figure out some way to manufacture an ‘incident’ off the island, the hunters would leave and we’d just have to worry about robots?” West said. “Sounds kinda too easy.”_

_“The hunters would leave a skeleton crew behind. And I doubt the robotic sentries have a ‘stun’ setting,” Noah clarified._

_“That,” Sylar repeated, “is not a problem for me. In fact, I believe that’s the reason you brought me in, isn’t it?”_

_There was a half beat of silence from everyone in the room before Peter spoke._

_“What kind of incident would get the hunters off the island?”_

_“Should just send a distress signal from the neighboring sector,” Alex muttered, half under his breath._

_“Yes, yes! Like Star Trek!” Hiro agreed enthusiastically._

_Half the people opened their mouths to object, when Noah commented, “Not a bad idea.”_  
\--

Monica checked the radar, and smiled. “Peter, they’re following the beacons out. The way Alex has them spread, it’ll give us at least forty-five minutes before they come back.”

Peter sighed in relief as Monica revved the boat’s motors to get them to the island as quickly as possible. He’d always thought there would be almost no time when Alex’s ability would be useful on a raid, but he’d been proved wrong. Though the currents in the bay were strong, and the water cold, they couldn’t stop Alex from doing his part. 

He’d gotten a drysuit to keep himself warm, and a series of beacons to simulate the emergency distress units (the “panic buttons,” as Noah called them) the hunters used to call for help. And he was now placing them along the waterfront, making it look like a group of the hunters’ friends were in a running, losing battle through the downtown area. If _that_ hadn’t worked, Peter wasn’t sure what would have, aside from setting a building on fire…

\-----

“Ok, we’re almost there,” Monica said, the _cheeping_ from her display reaching critical levels. They’d chosen a very foggy night to do this, and while it gave them great cover, there was also the possibility they’d run the ferry right into the dock.

“Can you see it?” Peter asked, squinting to see the faint lights from the island.

“Just about…”

“They hear you, I’m going to jam them,” Micah said suddenly, and clutched both hands around his modified radio jammer. As long as he had it, he could selectively jam the hunters’ communications on and from the island, but keep the rebels’ communicators clear. Unfortunately, that meant he couldn’t do anything about the robotic sentries at the same time. He was effectively chained to his equipment.

“Got it,” Peter said in acknowledgement. He heard someone come up from behind him, and could practically sense Nathan looming at his back.

“Pete, you ready?” he asked, putting a comforting hand on his brother’s shoulder. Peter squeezed his eyes shut, almost undone by that touch alone. He’d been trying so hard to hold himself in, knowing they were laying everything out on the line here, and all of it because of Nathan. 

“Are you?” he asked in return, concentrating to absorb Nathan’s flight, feeling a welcome and familiar lightness settling into his body.

“Always.”

Peter turned around, and saw Nathan in his battered jacket, hair standing every which way, looking as far as possible from the slick politician that had inhabited his brother’s body for over two years. He actually looked like his brother again.

“I love you. You know that, right?”

“I love you too, Nathan,” Peter said, and felt something more than the lightness of flight in his heart. “Let’s do this.”

\-----

Before the boat even docked, two hunters were out there, yelling and waving their rifles. From across a hundred yards of water, Matt concentrated, and they suddenly fell silent. Swaying on their feet, they lowered their guns, and finally collapsed to the docks.

“They’re asleep,” Matt gasped, shaking his head. He wasn’t used to using his power that far out.

“Ok, hang on!” Monica swung the boat into position, and Mohinder leapt out to tie it in place. Hard on his heels came Nathan, Peter, Elle, Luke, Eric, Ando, and after a long moment, Monica.

“Keep everything ready, we’ll be back!” Peter called. Matt nodded solemnly. He, Hiro, West, and Claire would be protecting the kids. If they could, they would have left Micah and Molly somewhere safer, but no one knew where “someplace safer” was, away from the rebels. At least here, they could help see through the end of the job they’d taken on for themselves. And if everything went to hell, there was still a chance they could get away.

\-----

Mohinder pounded up the long, steep concrete ramps, keeping himself as close to Sylar as he dared. At every seemingly endless turn, the group had been met with either a robotic gun or a frightened, lone hunter. The former Sylar mentally dismantled with contemptuous ease. The latter Mohinder would tackle, knocking them out and binding them so Peter or Nathan could fly them back to the ferry. Peter was determined that not a single person should die tonight, in spite of all the dangers. They were treading in deep enough political waters as it was. A single death could turn a powerful political statement into a rallying point for further violence if they weren’t careful. 

Mohinder and Sylar paused at the top of the last ramp, waiting for the others to get inside. With Micah concentrating on keeping communications down, they would have to get the cell doors open the old-fashioned way. Hence why they’d brought along everyone with the most destructive abilities. Peter and Nathan flew up first, followed by the others, the out-of-shape Eric wheezing behind. Ideally he should have stayed behind at the docks, but Mohinder knew they’d be trying to move around a hundred recently-drugged people. Someone with Eric’s power, to make people move like he wanted them to, was priceless in this situation. And even though Eric _knew_ he’d have to run, he’d volunteered for this anyway.

“Ok, go!” Peter shouted, and Mohinder rammed the door. It took three hits, but buckled in its frame, letting him fling it out of the way. The rebels poured in, Sylar first to crush the robotic sentries in their tracks. He made it look easy, but Mohinder could guess those guns could to frightful damage if even one went off.

“Ando, the lists!” Mohinder said. Ando peeled off from the main group as they ran into the central cellblock, Mohinder pausing just long enough to crack open the door to the security office for him. While the others would be breaking and entering, Ando would get the lists of names of every person in here, the lists Molly had been denied for a week, as well as all the hunters stationed here. She’d make sure they wouldn’t leave anyone behind.

\-----

“I’ll go high, you go low, tiger!” Elle said gleefully, letting her lightning spark across the electronic locks installed on every cell. Luke was smiling grimly, letting his microwaves scorch every bit of circuitry he could see. Behind those cell doors were still figures, dressed in white scrubs and strapped to their bunks, tubes going into and out of them like some kind of weird sci-fi experiment. That could have been him, he realized, and used the anger that caused to fuel his power. Cells were popping open in their wake, letting the others in to free the trapped specials.

As long as he could concentrate on destroying stuff, Luke could keep his mind off of Sylar. Trotting along behind him, watching him coolly break apart the robotic guns that could have ripped any one of the rebels to shreds, had made him remember Sylar’s ultimatum back in the woods of Montana. If Sylar hadn’t been here… Luke didn’t even want to think what would have happened. He _was_ carrying them all right now, and Luke knew it. 

Luke shook himself out of his thoughts, and looked back as he reached the end of the row. He could see there were already a dozen, wobbly-legged people being helped out of their cells.

“Is that it?” Peter asked into his communicator. “Molly, you have the list, right? Is there anyone in any other building?”

 _“That’s it. Just get them down here, fast!”_ Molly said.

“Ok people, let’s move like we have a purpose!” Elle announced, reaching into the closest cell and unstrapping the man on the bunk. “Wakey, wakey! We need to take a walk. And if you puke on me on the way down to the dock, you’ll wish you’d never been born-.”

Luke snorted with laughter despite the grim situation, and moved to unstrap the guy closest to him. If he could keep his mind on doing this, then he didn’t have time to think about the fact that in probably less than fifteen minutes, Peter was going to ask Sylar to take this very building down around their ears. Something that he knew for certain Peter hadn’t discussed with him beforehand, and probably for good reason.

\-----

“Go on, get these people out, and then make sure the ferry’s ready to cast off,” Peter urged, and Mohinder heaved two semi-conscious specials onto his back. With a last, reluctant look at Sylar, he nodded at Peter and ran out the door. Eric was the next-to-last rebel in the prison, and he had the last four specials, so out of it from the drugs that they needed him to move them.

“That’s the last of them,” Peter said, and Eric nodded. He paused his group of living marionettes and looked back at Sylar, who was at the end of the block.

“If you’re going to do it, I’d do it fast. The others will get curious and come back for you otherwise,” he counseled. Peter could feel himself going pale, but nodded. Somehow he wasn’t surprised that Eric Doyle had been the only one to call him on what he was about to do. It seemed fitting.

Eric hustled the last of the specials out of the cellblock without another word, leaving Peter and Ando alone with Sylar. Eric had been right; Peter didn’t want any more witnesses than were absolutely necessary for what was going to happen. 

“I have to say, this was a fairly boring party,” Sylar said, strolling up with a contemptuous yawn.

“Not enough of a challenge for you?” Peter asked, trying to slow his hammering heart.

“Not nearly. Dismantling robots is hardly difficult work.”

“How about something bigger? We need the hunters to know they can’t ever pull something like this again.” 

Peter pulled Matt’s drawings from his pocket. During all their planning with Sylar, no one had ever shown them to him, and he’d never asked. Maybe it had been out of arrogance. Maybe, like Mohinder had suggested, it was because Sylar’s last few experiences with future drawings had been particularly brutal. But either way, Peter needed him to know now. He handed the drawings over, and let Sylar draw his own conclusions.

\--  
 _“He can tell the history of any object he touches. That was an ability he acquired while he was at the Company. You have to be very careful what you tell him, Peter, because eventually he’ll figure out any lie. And when he does, he won’t be pleased.” Angela hadn’t asked for understanding or forgiveness for her part in that chapter of Sylar’s past, but Peter had been grateful just for the truth._  
\--

“You want to take down the damn _walls?_ ” Sylar snarled, not at all pleased by this turn of events. 

“We have to! That’s what Matt drew,” Peter said. Sylar narrowed his eyes.

“How the hell am I supposed to do that, Petrelli?”

“With his help.”

Peter turned, calling, and Ando came running, up dodging the debris from the robots Sylar had already taken out.

“Hiro’s friend,” Sylar said flatly. “What the hell are you going to do?”

“Help you,” Ando said, just as flatly. 

\--  
 _“I didn’t want him to know about you,” Peter explained. Ando nodded, looking over his shoulder in paranoia, even though he knew Sylar had gone out for a walk. It didn’t take a genius to understand that his ability, initially so useful, could be deadly to him if Sylar found out about it. Everyone had been ostentatiously ignoring the fact that Ando even_ had _an ability._

_“Yes, I understand, but why do you want him to know now?”_

_Peter looked across the room at Angela Petrelli. Ando saw him go pale and start to look sick._

_“My mother dreams the future,” he said. “If Alcatraz falls, and we’re able to change something about this whole government mess for the better, then someone is going to die.” Peter swallowed, and finally said it. “If we give him the power he needs to destroy the island, Sylar dies.”_

_Ando flicked his eyes to the door where Sylar had gone, and then over to Hiro. Sylar was a killer, a psychopath, a villain in every sense of the word. He’d seen Sylar’s handiwork close up, on poor, innocent Charlie, on Isaac Mendez; he’d watched the man kill his own mother, for God’s sake. Shouldn’t he be glad that Peter had found some way to end the man while still doing something good?_

_He didn’t, though. He felt just as nauseous as Peter looked. To bring someone in to help and then use that unspoken trust to lure him into death? He could practically hear what Hiro would say, “That is not the hero’s path. A true warrior would meet his enemy face-to-face.”_

_“New York didn’t blow up,” Ando said instead. “Your mother dreamed that too, right?”_

_“Yeah,” Peter said, looking relieved._

_“So… we can change it?”_

_“We won’t know until we try. I don’t care if it is Sylar, I don’t want anyone else to die!” Peter said, sounding like he was in agony._

_“Then let’s do it.”_  
\--

“You wanted power, Sylar,” Peter said, briefly clapping Ando on the shoulder to absorb his ability. Ando’s heart began to pound, and hoped to hell Peter knew what he was doing. “We’re going to give you as much as you can handle. All you have to do is bring this place down. Every. Single. Stone.”

“What kind of power can _you_ give me that’ll take this place apart?” Sylar asked, looking from side to side at the sturdy walls.

“Supercharge your own powers. Then you can do anything,” Ando said, raising his hands to let red lightning jump from palm to palm.

Sylar stared at him with shock and hunger, and then fixed his gaze on Peter, sobering.

“So, that’s how this is going to go. Kill two birds with one stone.”

He knew. Ando didn’t know how he’d figured it out, but he knew.

“I don’t want anyone to die tonight,” Peter said, and Ando knew he meant it. 

Sylar looked up at the ceiling for a few heartbeats, and Ando would have given a lot to know what was going on in his head.

“Let’s do this,” he said suddenly, and braced himself.

“Sylar…”

“Peter, stop talking and _do it!”_ he yelled. 

The tension in the room snapped. As one, Peter and Ando raised their hands and hit Sylar with a double blast of supercharged power.

\-----

As Luke hustled the last of Eric’s woozy specials into the ferry, he could feel the dock beneath him begin to rumble. Behind him, orange light began to fill the sky. Turning, hearing gasps and screams from the others in the ferry, Luke saw the buildings above him begin to rip themselves apart. A howling crescendo of sound was coming out of the main prison, and the other buildings began to disassemble themselves, stones coming apart in a frightening display of telekinetic power.

Nathan and Hiro stared up at the destruction with horror, and Luke did a quick mental headcount.

“Oh fuck,” he muttered. Peter, Ando, and Sylar were still up there.

“I’m going after them!” Nathan said, and Mohinder abruptly yanked him down before he could take flight.

“You can’t fly into that! It’d be suicide!” Mohinder yelled. “We have to get these people away from here as soon as possible.”

“I’m not leaving anyone behind!” Nathan screamed, trying and failing to pull free from Monhinder’s grasp. “Damn it, let me go! I can’t leave him, I can’t do that to him again.”

Luke looked up at the unholy Armageddon going on above, realizing Sylar was the cause of all of it, and finally felt fear untainted by any of his old desire. Whatever Sylar might have been, now that he had as much power as he could handle, he was showing his true colors. Luke could have been a part of that, of the world ripping itself apart for his own pleasure. And it scared him to death. 

He felt Elle’s hand slip into his own as Nathan continued to rage against Mohinder.

“We don’t know if they’re even alive!” Mohinder was saying, still holding Nathan back.

“They are!”

Molly’s voice rang out through the half-panicked crowd like a clarion trumpet. “Peter and Ando are alive!”

Luke felt his heart skip a beat. She hadn’t said anything about Sylar.

Matt stepped forward and put his hand on Mohinder’s shoulder. Mohinder abruptly let Nathan go, and turned aside. 

“Go, get them!” Molly urged. Nathan didn’t have to be told twice, and was out of the boat and into the sky like a shot.

“Cast off!” Monica screamed to Mohinder. “Cast off now! We can’t be this close!”

Mohinder ran for the ropes, leaping back onto the ship as Monica began to pull away, opening up the engine the minute they were pointed towards open water. The still-woozy specials were mostly just clinging to whatever rails and chairs they could, staring open-mouthed at the destructive kaleidoscope above them. West, looking green and terrified, was standing with Matt over the bound hunters. The few of them that were awake were too smart, and too distracted, to talk. 

Luke and Elle squinted up at Alcatraz as the ferry pulled away, and Molly joined them at the window.

“Where are they?” Elle whispered, and Luke nearly couldn’t hear her above the clattering of the engines and the roar of the exploding stones.

“He’s going to die,” Luke said, the words out of his mouth before he could stop to filter them. 

\-----

Sylar was riding the wave of his own powers, enhanced clairsentience letting him “see” every building on the island, every beam, every rivet, every stone. His mind stabbed out in all directions, wrenching stones from their mortar, screws from their walls, bars from their moorings. He was disassembling everything he could sense like it was a poorly made watch, and then started to dissect them further. Stones began to split in half again and again, and metal began to shred. Sylar realized that with his powers pumped up so far, with red lightning crackling in his veins, he could reduce things to a molecular level, cause a chain reaction, recombine the elements to scour the entire place clean. He’d never been able to do so much, so quickly, and it was unbelievably intoxicating.

“Sylar!”

A voice, insistent and nearby, intruded. He turned to see Peter and Ando standing on a crumbling platform of rock surrounded by a fine mist of particles. The same platform he was standing on, soon to be lost to the greater work, the perfect cleansing.

“Sylar, that’s enough! Please, we have to go!” Peter pleaded.

“Peter! Ando!”

Sylar looked up to see Nathan forcing himself through the haze of stone and metal, flying through the sharp shards to land at Peter’s side.

“Pete, we have to get out of here,” Nathan said. His grip on Peter’s shoulder was implacable, the no-nonsense grip of a man determined to spare his younger brother any further harm. Not a politician, not anymore. And Ando, frightened into silence by what Sylar was doing, scared that he might be the next thing dismantled, but standing strong in the face of almost certain death. Just like all the rebels had, from Molly to Luke, even in facing him, their worst nightmare.

They were going to pull this off. The rebels were going to actually change the whole damn world.

And that was the truest thing Sylar had ever known. Maybe the only true thing he’d ever known. What good were goals when they brought him nothing he’d been able to truly savor? He didn’t belong in the world the rebels were going to make. He’d always wanted to be special, and maybe this time he actually could be. 

The deadly haze suddenly stilled for a second, and all three of the others turned to stare at him, not knowing what was going on.

“Go,” he said shortly.

“Sylar, come on-,” Peter started, reaching out a hand.

“Go!” he roared. “Tell Luke and Elle… they were right.”

Sylar saw Peter opened his mouth to protest, turned his mind towards them and _shoved_ them clear of his own funeral pyre.

\-----

Molly suddenly _shrieked_ as the sky turned yellow and white. Luke shielded his eyes futilely, tears stinging them when he put his arm down to see Alcatraz Island scoured down to the bare rock.

“He’s gone,” Elle whispered. “He’s gone…”

“Look, _look!_ ” Molly cried, and pointed up into the sky. They could see three faint figures silhouetted against the exploding sky, two of them flying away from the wreckage, carrying a third between them.

Luke didn’t ask which three people it was. He already knew.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Luke lay on the floor of the warehouse, Elle next to him, so worn-out he didn’t want to move for the next three weeks. Most of the others looked the same, to one degree or another. They’d barely gotten docked when they’d had to hustle everyone into a warehouse, needing to protect the specials, and themselves, from a retaliatory attack from the remaining hunters. All it would take would be one angry hunter team to find them, and mass carnage would ensue.

For a half hour, they’d sat in tense waiting, every little noise making everyone jump and prepare to defend themselves. Then Micah had straightened up behind his laptop, looking surprised to the point of being in shock.

“The hunters are being called in,” he said in wonder.

A few moments later, Peter had gotten a call from Angela, and Luke watched his expression go from stressed to relieved in the time it took to blink.

“They’re coming. Hang tight everyone,” he said, and had to sit down, eyes looking suspiciously wet. Nathan put an arm around his shoulder, and Luke could see everyone in the crowd starting to go limp with relief. Peter had been wound so tight, that to see him actually _sitting down_ meant something. 

Around the warehouse everyone else was doing the same. Matt and Mohinder were hovering over the kids with Monica, West was staring blankly at the floor, and Alex, newly arrived, wet-headed, and still trying to warm up again, was curled up in a blanket. The other rebels were scattered amongst the rescued specials, or guarding the very intimidated hunters.

It was only when Luke and Elle had managed to find an untenanted patch of floor that Ando found them. Like Peter and Nathan, he was smudged with soot and had small cuts on his face and hands. He looked, in short, like he’d just lived through a war.

“Sylar wouldn’t leave,” he blurted out. “Peter wanted to save him, but he wouldn’t stop using his powers.”

The rest of Ando’s words seemed to stick in his throat, and Elle just shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”

“Wait,” Ando got out. “He said… right before he pushed us clear… he said, ‘Tell Luke and Elle they were right.’” 

“God damn it,” Elle said, softly and fervently. “God damn it, Sylar.”

“Why didn’t he go?” Luke asked out loud, his eyes feeling tight and hot.

“I don’t know, I-,” Ando cut himself and looked away. Flushing with embarrassment, he finally worked his way back through the crowd, leaving Luke and Elle alone.

“What the fuck?” Luke said quietly. Elle wrapped her arms around him, and Luke realized he was crying. “What the hell was he thinking?”

“He’s done,” Elle said, and Luke could hear the thickness in her voice. “He’s done, tiger.”

Luke reached up to hold onto Elle, feeling her shaking just as badly as he was. Sylar was done, but he’d never be gone, not for them. 

\-----

Peter jerked to his feet when the main door to the warehouse suddenly opened. He felt stark panic when men in suits and earpieces began to pour into the place, panic that was only relieved when Matt’s voice echoed through his head.

_It’s Angela and Noah, don’t panic. They’re here, and they brought the president!_

_What?!”_ Peter said, hearing the same questions ripped from another dozen throats. Angela had said she’d succeeded in bringing in a higher power, and Matt had drawn it, but still, to hear it and see it face-to-face in light of all that had happened tonight was incredible.

Hard on the heels of the secret service agents was a black limousine with American flags fluttering from the back. It glided to a halt almost right in front of Peter, and he felt his mouth go dry. This was what they’d planned for, hoped for, sacrificed for, and now that it was happening, Peter wasn’t even sure if he was going to be able to talk. This had always been Nathan’s sort of thing, rather than his.

The agents ringed themselves around the limo, looking dour and suspicious, but not nearly as afraid as Peter had feared. After all, for several months, people like him had been potential terrorists.

The door to the limo opened, revealing Angela and Noah. His mother, Peter saw, was looking more than usually smug. Noah, even more so. They had, he hoped, good reason. Peter was heartsick at Sylar’s loss, afraid that he wouldn’t be able to face the music that was coming, and also painfully triumphant that the rebels had finally managed to make something _change_. 

The rebels and specials were almost unconsciously crowding around the limo, trying to get a good look as President Dorn stepped out. A hush descended over the crowd as he took a few steps forward, meeting Peter and Nathan’s eyes.

“Senator Petrelli, I believe you and I will have to have a long conversation about the best way to protect the American people,” he said. 

“I’ve had recent cause to reverse my previous stance, Mr. President,” Nathan replied, with a precise incline of his head. 

Not smiling, the President turned to face Peter squarely. 

“Mr. Petrelli, over the course of the past few months, you have been running a rebellion against American soldiers. You’ve been the cause of dozen of fake identities, the injury of many men, and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of U.S. government property, in addition to the complete… dismantling of Alcatraz.”

“We didn’t ask to be born how we are,” Peter started, but the President cut him off.

“You did not, but it doesn’t stop the fact that some of you have been born with abilities that are more powerful than any weapon. And these abilities cannot be detected, cannot be regulated, and cannot be controlled by anything more than the will of the user. They could be anywhere, at any time. While some of you are decent people who want nothing more than to live their lives in peace, all it takes is one person willing to use their powers for selfish, illegal personal gain, and there will be an outcry such as this world has never seen. The panic and destruction that would ensue would make a world war look tame in comparison.” The President looked over at Nathan while he spoke, and Peter suddenly realized, in a way Nathan had never been able to explain, why he’d done what he’d done.

“However, in the course of your rebellion, you never killed anyone. You never let a single soldier die, no matter the cost to you, not even in retaliation for the extreme violence of the tactics brought against you by rogue elements. You rescued over a hundred people without harming anything but property, and you did it for the right reasons.”

“Mr. President, what do you want?” Peter asked, a lump in his throat. “What are we going to do?” What _could_ they do in the face of everything that had happened? What could compensate for the crimes he’d committed to try to stop the government madness, or the crimes some of the rebels had committed before Peter had known them? What could possibly compensate for the people that had died on both sides, the lives that had been lost, and the people that had been sacrificed?

“We can’t go on like we have been. And we can’t go back to the way things were. I think there’s a middle ground, and we can find a solution that works for _all_ citizens,” he said, looking out over the crowd of specials as he spoke. “You went to a lot of trouble to get my attention.” He nodded in the direction of Alcatraz. “Let’s see what we can do together.”

Peter stepped forward to shake the President’s hand, and could feel everyone behind him beginning to straighten up, taking on the strength of new hope. Peter could feel it too, feel the end of the war, and the start of something new.

~Fin.


End file.
